September 16, 2010

Please Don’t Hotlink

Hi guys!

You’ve probably been experiencing a bit of slowness this week (particularly today) and lag time on Musings or maybe you’re having a problem even getting to the site.

I know I’m having a hard time logging in to post today or even answer comments as I’ve had to reboot my server several times this morning because of a heavy load on it. The past few days has been the worst because I’ve had various forums across the world hotlinking images from my site.

Basically hotlinking is embedding an image that is still served on my server. This means everyone is accessing that image on high traffic forums and causing serious lag time here or even in some cases bringing the entire website down. I’m already using all my system resources and paying quite a good deal of money to do so. At this point it’s either move my entire site to a new server and pay a higher host fee or just hopefully urge others to stop hotlinking.

There aren’t any shortcuts for stopping this sadly without causing havoc to my site and feed.

I’m telling you this in the hopes you might help me out. If you see anyone hotlinking my images please urge them to remove the image and either link to the original post or upload the photo to the site they are on and just source www.musingsofamuse.com.

This morning the problem seems to be originating from QVC forums, MUA, and an International forum however this pretty much happens alot everywhere including blogs that grab my images and hotlink them.

Thanks, any help is appreciated.

Sorry to bug you with this!

18 Comments

About the Muse

Isabella MuseIsabella is just an average everyday geeky girl who doesn’t blend her eyeshadow correctly, wears too much blush, and hopes she never finds her holy grail products because she likes the thrill of the chase so much. Her mission is to bring you super honest reviews on makeup, skincare, fragrance and all things beauty. She’s in no way an expert on the topic and she sure as hell isn’t a super model. But she’s passionate about makeup and is seeking like-minded individuals that like pina coladas, getting caught in the rain, and ones that enjoy spending hundreds of dollars at Sephora without feeling buyer’s remorse. If you’re that person feel free to reach out and leave a comment or follow me on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Bloglovin‘.

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Comments

  • LiAnn – Sparklecrack Central

    Do you have access to edit your .htaccess file? If so, it should be easy enough to block image-hotlinking from anywhere except those sites you specify. Let me go dig up a tutorial link.

    • the Muse

      I can’t do that liann b/c it’ll disable images in my feed. I can access my .htaccess file right now and block image hotlinking but that ruins means ones in my feed as well. 🙁

      • LiAnn – Sparklecrack Central

        There may be a way, then, to modify the .htaccess file so that it only disallows hotlinking from specific domains. I haven’t ever researched that, though – you’d need to hit some webmaster forums and ask questions. I’m sure some people have done it before, though…I just don’t know the syntax.

        • the Muse

          you can disable from specific domains but doing so just hurts traffic Liann 🙁

      • electronicfly

        I donno bout the others, but since I need to load your site to read the full article anyway, whether or not the pics loads on your feed doesn’t really matter to me.

  • JoElla

    Okay I have a big ole DUH! question.. can we still link your site on message forums?

    • the Muse

      of course jo 😀 I’d love that. but just not embedding my images into a post ;-D

      Just link directly to the post. Don’t worry you do it the RIGHT way 😀

      Someone recently started a Bobbi Brown thread on QVC but they took images and embedded them into the post instead of just linking here to my post.

      Does that make sense ;-D

  • Larie

    Aw, sad face for the havoc…but you are such a sweetie! If people were lagging down my site (if I had a site, haha), I’d be like “HEY. QUIT IT. KTHNXBYE.”

    • the Muse

      lol larie 😀 awww I LOVE you all so much but the hotlinking murders me. Hard to work like this and also hard for peeps to enjoy the site 🙁

  • Irene

    preach on!!! MUA and QVC are horrible, I hate having to read about this over and over and over again on my favorite blogs. I love your site and I hope people will finally understand what hot linking is.

    • the Muse

      aw thanks Irene. I wouldn’t mind if I were still on blogger as the server can take the beat down but my VPS can’t handle it sadly even running on full resources!!!!!!!!!!!! I think MUA’ers understand it fine but choose to ignore it completely. Very insensitive group.

  • Marie

    I feel your pain, because hotlinking is a pain in the a** (sorry for the language). Best case scenario, people are uninformed about hotlinking; worst case scenario they just don’t care at all. Either way, I hope you can find a solution soon. I wish I could help you but I can’t.

    • the Muse

      god yes marie sigh. I think alot of people simply don’t care 😛 thanks hun! if you see anyone doing it I appreciate it if you told them not too! that’s always helpful! ;-D

  • Gia

    awww I’m sorry. I never understood the reason for hotlinking other peoples pics. I mean really, is Photobucket that hard to use?

  • Liz

    You could always replace the pictures with something…inappropriate. It isn’t a new solution, but it’s still eminently satisfying.