Using .htaccess to block all image requests if the referrer does not originate from your own site is sometimes not a good idea, as I learned today.

• Images in RSS and Atom feeds do not appear, if parsed by an online aggregator. I’m subscribed to my own RSS feed on NetVibes, just to see if anything is wrong with the feed. Surely enough this paid off, as I discovered that one of my previous posts did not show the designated images.

• Affiliate and formal linkages to images banners and badges do not work.

• Hotlink-protected images are not crawled by search engines, as they either lead to an error or a generic image. It is possible to include search engine url’s in the allowed referrer list, but it is hardly possible to include all search engines.

There is really no harm in this actually. If some site is sucking way too much bandwidth, you can block specific referers, using this method.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://jackass.com.*$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(.*).jackass.com.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule .*.(gif|jpg|png|jpeg)$ - [F,NC]

Put that in the file with the name .htaccess in your root folder, and all hotlinking from that one domain will be forbidden (images will not show up).