Thread: Finally stopped the bw thieves

My blog used to have lists of daily domains that were ready to register.
The downloads were free.
Well, for quite some time, the blog has not had new lists as I moved away from all that thankless work.

But the downloads were still there, going way back to middle of last year.

So yesterday, I was checking stats and noticed that the downloads were humongous!
But not direct downloads, but from others hotlinking to the downloads.
So, I deleted the downloads page completely.
No more downloads!

But I just went back and noticed that the 404's were up to a nice number, and growing!

So made up a 404 page to lead people to other sites.

If you offer downloads, free or paid, check your stats to see if the downloads are at a high level and whether they are hotlinked at other sites.

Also, I changed the download links for my site where I offer free scripts to download.
Same thing, downloads down a huge amount, 404's up quite a bit.

I know a lot of people that change their downloads page at least once a month, just to prevent that problem. And custom 404 pages are WONDERFUL

There are also methods you could use in your .htaccess to redirect the hotlink attempts

Been looking at that solution.

Might be the way to go.

Yes, redirect is the best way to prevent this.

Thanks for the advice friends.

Thats a pretty good idea. Should probably check my downloads that I don't use anymore, delete them and redirect people to my other sites...

this 404 page cam come in handy.. lol.. advertise stuff on it