Caution .htaccess idiot at work
 

I am officially frustrated to tears.

This is my scenario:

I need to be able to allow hotlinking of thumbs for a handful of TGP's. My thoughts were that I could make a directory inside my domain...rather like...

http://www.mydomain.com/shitIwanthotlinked/test.jpg

Inside the folder shitIwanthotlinked I would put the thumbs and a .htacess file. From everything I have read everywhere, I thought I could put

RewriteEngine Off

in the .htaccess file and life would be peachy. They could hotlink, I could use my partner accounts, and the whole world would fill with joy.

But I was oh-so-wrong.

I get my 404 error when I try it. I've also used some of those online testers, and they say my hotlink protection is working just fine and dandy. ~sighs~

Now, I have also read that I can add domains to my main? htaccess and then they would be able to hotlink. I was trying to avoid doing that, as every time I *look* at the htaccess in my root I seem to mess it up.

I am going to try my hosting company again tonight. I really, really like my hosts. This time I wasn't able to make their tech guy understand what I wanted to do. Or I wasn't understanding him, which is more likely.

In the iterim I thought I would ask here. I really need the most stress free way of making this happen, as I'm highly allergic to anything having to do with my server outside of uploading files.

The best thing to do is buy another domain and have no htaccess on it and allow toplist banners, thumbs or whatever be hotlinked from that domain.

More than willing to go that route, Ramster. The price of a domain is cheap compared to the headache I have now.

When I do that...well, let me backtrack a little and explain.

In my root, I have an htaccess file that is all that referrer stuff that I don't know what it really means. I just know that every time I buy a new domain, I have to add the domain to what is in root to allow galleries or whatever to be visible.

Then inside each directory I have something like this:

RewriteEngine on
#RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?dommedesires.com(/)?.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule .*\.(gif|jpg|jpeg|bmp)$ - [F,NC]


So then, if I buy a new domain, would I just add it to my list in root, then *not* put the above gibberish in that directory?

I am sorry, I know I don't speak tech language very well. htaccess stuff is like going into the hardware store. I stand there with a deer-caught-in-the-headlights look until someone takes pity on me.

~half teasing smile~

~jumps up and down in glee~

It works! It works!

I can be hotlinked on my new domain!!!

Thanks, Ramster |bananna|