Hi,

I received a two complaints from visitors recently that they were not able to view my site properly. One I'm kind of writing off as newbie confusion. But the second one does seem to have merit. There are two things that I guess might cause problems. One is the Rewrite code that prevents leaching of images, and from directly typing in a couple URLs. His complaint is that some (or many?) of the images on my site are not showing up. And when he clicks my 'join' link, he is redirected back to my main page. The join page is one of the URLs that one cannot type directly into the browser. If they do, they would be redirected to the frontpage. He said he is clicking the link, but is still being redirected.

The majority of my visitors aren't having problems, considering sign-ups have been pretty constant. But I don't want to exclude anyone. Might there be something I'm not considering? AFAIK, my Rewrite code is up to snuff, allowing for any letter case, and even a ':80' to be appended to the URL. Still, he supposedly cannot properly view my site.

Please take a look at http://www.250Free.com and tell me if you have any trouble viewing anything. Do the images show up completely? Can you click the join link? I'd also greatly appreciate some suggestions as to why this might be occurring.

Thanks,

Brian

The page seems to load fine (pictures show up/Join link works). I'm using IE 5.5 Service Pack 2 on Windows 2000. I would ask him what browser he's using, in case it's a browser issue.

WinXP here, I.E. 6.0

No probs at all.

Cya,
Cloak

I tried it in Netscape and IE and didn't have a problem.

Worked OK with Mozilla & IE on W98x. Did a bit of testing with your images (so potentproducts.com is gonna show up in your error logs ;)) and your Hotlink code works fine.

I think there is a problem in that the page loads slow, and if the Browser times out before all images are loaded, they won't show. I also noticed the redirect kicks in when some tries to "view image", but that was the only time.

IE6 sydney australia

:karate: all sweet!

Hmmmm, thanks for the help folks. I recieved another email about this same issue. Not sure what I can do.

Thanks,

Brian

Tested on IE 5.5 on windows 2000 .It has no problem with your site. Site looks good and also functioning is ok.

Although I'm not sure why you've appended ":80" to your code (never seen anyone need to do it?), I would have look at your .htaccess file and check the following:

This is good:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://250free.com/ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.250free.com/ [NC]

This is bad:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://250free.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.250free.com/.*$ [NC]

As far as the image loading goes, have you compressed them?
And someone else mentioned getting some Feedback on Browsers with the problem. Could provide some helpful info right there.

Originally posted by Website Rob
Although I'm not sure why you've appended ":80" to your code (never seen anyone need to do it?), I would have look at your .htaccess file and check the following:

.....

As far as the image loading goes, have you compressed them?
And someone else mentioned getting some Feedback on Browsers with the problem. Could provide some helpful info right there.

Thanks for the help. The :80 was appended because sometime back, there was a problem with some AOL users seeing sites with these rules in place.

I have tested the site in multiple browsers (NS 4.7x, Mozilla, IE 5 & 6, and Lynx) and never had a problem seeing anything.

I removed the .htaccess code suspecting it the culprit and it looks like one of the person's problems went away. Go figure. Mod Rewrite is so finicky to get working properly, and now it appears some ISPs don't send or receive the request to its' liking. It's beyond my scope.

Anyway, here's my .htaccess if anyone would like to take a look:


RewriteOptions inherit
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://([a-z0-9-]+\.)*250free.com(:80)*/$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://([a-z0-9-]+\.)*250free.com(:80)* [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^https://([a-z0-9-]+\.)*250free.com(:80)*/$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^https://([a-z0-9-]+\.)*250free.com(:80)* [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://([a-z0-9-]+\.)*isightinc.com(:80)* [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^https://([a-z0-9-]+\.)*250host.com(:80)*/$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^https://([a-z0-9-]+\.)*250host.com(:80)*$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://([a-z0-9-]+\.)*250host.com(:80)*/$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://([a-z0-9-]+\.)*250host.com(:80)*$ [NC]
RewriteRule .*[JjMm][Pp][Gg]$|.*[Gg][Ii][Ff]$|.*[Tt][Ii][Ff][Ff]$|.*[Rr][Aa][Mm]$|.*[Ww][Aa][Vv]$|.*[Mm][Ii][Dd]$|.*[Mm][Ii][Dd][Ii]$|.*[Aa][Uu]$|.*[Vv][Oo][Cc]$|.*[Cc][Ll][Aa][Ss][Ss]$|.*[Zz][Ii][Pp]$|.*[Tt][EeXx][Tt]$|.*[Mm][Pp][3]$|.*[Aa][Vv][Ii]$ http://www.250Free.com [L,R]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://([a-z0-9-]+\.)*isightinc.com(:80)*/$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://([a-z0-9-]+\.)*isightinc.com(:80)* [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://([a-z0-9-]+\.)*250free.com(:80)*/$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://([a-z0-9-]+\.)*250free.com(:80)* [NC]
RewriteRule join.php|new.cgi http://www.250Free.com [R]


The redundancy with the '*' and '*/$' was because it wouldn't work completely for me unless I included both ways.

Thanks,

Brian

Wow, that looks complicated. ;)

As I have about 4 Domains all pointing to one and like you, other sites that are allowed, I found that I ran into lots of error log entries when using a Redirect [R] and the ".*$" at the end and some problems with images displaying using the other Domain Names. There may have been some site Visitors having problems in my situation, but I never got any Feedback so I'm not sure.

Although I liked the idea of (in my case) supplying Bandwidth thieves with another image, I didn't like all the error entries and problems.

So instead, I switched to just using Fail [F] and dropping the ".*$" at the end. Seems to have worked much better now. My situation may not be as complicated as yours though, Brian, as I only prevent for 3 formats. This is an example of how I have mine setup and has been working very well.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://250free.com/ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.250free.com/ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://isightinc.com/ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.isightinc.com/ [NC]
RewriteRule .*\.(gif|jpg|zip)$ - [F,L]


I do know that with the various Server setups, there doesnt' seem to be a "one size fits all" in these situations. Between how the Server is setup, testing the various methods, and always having to clear Browser cache when testing, I just don't have to the time to figure out all the angles.

So I found what worked (in my case) 100% of the time and, although it may not be exactly what I want, it does do the "main purpose" of the job and allows me to focus on other things. That may have been the most important lesson of all. :D