Hotlinking Hot Link Hotlink Red X

[chasmcg]

I've had this problem before with WinXP. A visitor to my site now says she has it.

I have hotlinking enabled. The visitor comes to my homepage on my website and sees a red x where the images should be. She goes to another page on my site, clicks a link to go back to the home page and the images now appear. If she had clicked the back button to come back to my home page she would still see the red x.

Why? This is caused by this I think.... When the visitor comes to my website from another website, the server interprets this as hotlinking because it is reading the URL from the other website. Even though the visitor is on my website. So it serves no images. When the visitor goes to another page from my homepage, then clicks a link to go back to the homepage, the server sees the visitor as coming from my website and loads the images.

This doesn't happen to everyone but to a few. Anyone know the cure for this? Hope I'm being clear. Thanks.

 

[cPanelKenneth]

Hotlink protection is based upon the HTTP_REFERER variable being provided by the browser. The trouble is, this variable is not always defined by the browser. For example, if I open my browser and navigate directly to a web site, the HTTP_REFERER will be blank, because I was not 'referred' to the site, I used direct addressing. Some browsers and proxies remove or break the HTTP_REFERER variable.

 

[chasmcg]

Thanks for the reply. I wonder though, why this happens to some and not others?