The purpose of this tutorial is to show you how to stop people using images hosted on your domain within their own websites.

You can use the information in this tutorial to force hot linked images to be redirected to another image to dub the person a lecher. This, however, does not save you bandwidth since an image is still being pulled from your server.

All of the code below goes into .htaccess on your server (this is a system file and is set to be hidden, if you can’t view it then check your FTP client settings). If you are experiencing problems with these scripts, then please insure that mod_rewrite is enabled.

Operators Dictionary:
! - Not
^ - Match the beginning of the search
$ - Match the end of the search

Bracket Dictionary:
[L] - Last (this is the last before to apply the rule)
[NC] - Not Case-sensitive (does not differentiate between upper and lower case)
[R] - Redirect (forces redirection)

The following code allows only sites from mydomain.com to use the images in the directory:


RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?mydomain\.com [NC]
RewriteRule \.(bmp|gif|jpe?g|png)$ -[F,NC,L]


Line 1 declares the ability to rewrite.
Line 2 sets it so that that if the referral is empty the rule does not apply.
Line 3 sets is so that if the referral is the domain then the rule does not apply.
Line 4 declares that any file with the extention bmp, BMP, gif, GIF, jpg, JPG, jpeg, JPEG, png, and PNG will go to an empty site.

The following code allows domains example.com and example2.com to use the image while preventing others from hotlinking:


RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?example.com/ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?example2.com/ [NC]
RewriteRule \.(bmp|gif|jpe?g|png)$ -[F,NC,L]


Line 1 declares the ability to rewrite.
Line 2 and 3 checks if the referral is not of the domains example.com and example2.com. If it is, then the condition is not met.
Line 4 declares that any file with the extension bmp, gif, jpg, jpeg, png, and their capitalized recipricals will go to an empty site.

The following code redirects any image hotlinked from your site to another image:


RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?mydomain.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule \.(bmp|gif|GIF|jpe?g|png)$ http://www.mydomain.com/rawr.gif [R,L]


Line 1 declares the ability to rewrite.
Line 2 checks if there is not a referral.
Line 3 checks if the referral is itself.
Line 4 declares that all extensions of bmp, gif, GIF, jpg, jpeg, and png will redirect to the image rawr.gif in the root directory.

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This entry was posted on Monday, May 29th, 2006 at 7:53 pm and is filed under Htaccess, Tutorials. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.