This was an absolute nightmare and one of the main reasons I started to hate hosting things myself.

Notes ∞

NC – No Case
L – Last rule
redirectpermanent /foo/index.html http://subdomain.example.com

Security ∞

Stop hotlinking ∞

# Stop hotlinking
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
# multiple URLs are possible..
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://example.com [NC]
RewriteRule .*\.(gif|jpg|png|swf)$ - [NC,F]
# I could also redirect them to something else:
# RewriteRule \.(gif|jpg|png|swf)$ http://example.com/no_hotlinking.jpg [R,L]

IP Banning ∞

Another solution exists in .htaccess

See also Bad Behavior and MediaWiki security.

IP Banning with mod_rewrite ∞

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(www\.)?([a-z0-9\-]+)\.blogspot\.com(/)? [NC]

using an external file ∞

So instead of needing to restart the server every time there is a change, have an external document referred to:

# Block IPs and hostnames using an external configuration file:
RewriteMap    hosts-deny  txt:/opt/lampp/mediawiki/hosts_deny.map.txt
RewriteCond   ${hosts-deny:%{REMOTE_HOST}|NOT-FOUND} !=NOT-FOUND [OR]
RewriteCond   ${hosts-deny:%{REMOTE_ADDR}|NOT-FOUND} !=NOT-FOUND
RewriteRule   ^/.*  -  [F]

For example, under winblows you could use something like `C:/xampplite/mediawiki/hosts_deny.map.txt

The contents of this hosts_deny.map.txt file could be something like:

# use the regular URLs, dumbass.  =)
127.0.0.1 -
localhost -

TODO – Can this do ranges?

Bouncing referrers ∞

# Selectively bounce or redirect certain referrers, dynamically with an external file:
RewriteMap  bounce txt:path/to/referrer_bounce.map.txt

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !=""
RewriteCond ${bounce:%{HTTP_REFERER}} ^-$
RewriteRule ^.* %{HTTP_REFERER} [R,L]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !=""
RewriteCond ${bounce:%{HTTP_REFERER}|NOT-FOUND} !=NOT-FOUND
RewriteRule ^.* ${bounce:%{HTTP_REFERER}} [R,L]

For example, under Windows you could use something like C:/xampplite/mediawiki/referrer_bounce.map.txt

The contents of this referrer_bounce.map.txt file could be something like:

http://www.example.com/bad/index.html    -
http://www.example.com/bad/index2.html   https://spiralofhope.com/

spiralofhope

mod_rewrite