Roxy

Ever wonder how or what eats up your bandwidth the most? Well in this short article I will tell you! Its actually in an area, you'd probably never look for either, but in the end it really does help a lot.

AWStats

Logging into your cPanel and scrolling to the Logs category, you'll find the icon for awstats. Click on it. You will then be taken to a page with a list of all domains and subdomains created under your account. Click on the domain of choice and you will be taken to their stats page. Once inside awstats, you will see a list of navigation links on the side bar to the left. Find where it says Referrers and click on the referring sites link.



On the right side you will be taken to that section of the page. Here you will notice a list of links, some from your own server, while others might be from an outside source. Those that you do not recognize can sometimes be linking to your site by either a simple text/image link or by direct linking to a file from your server, which eats up your bandwidth because people are viewing on their site, but its linked to your server!



If by chance they are direct linking, first try to contact the owner of the website and tell to take of the links from their site, or to save them to their own server. If nothing, then contact the host.

Webalizer

Just as AWStats, Webalizer has a simliar feature where you can check referers and see what they are either linking from your site...or linking to you. I prefer Webalizer over AWStats because I feel they give a higher amount of refer links then awstats does. Just like above, once you are logged into cPanel, scroll to the Log category and click on the icon that says webalizer (not webalizer FTP). You will see a list of all domains/subdomains under your account, so click on the one you would like to check. On the webalizer page, it will show you a brief summary of monthly hits and stats to your site, click on a specific month.



Once on the next page, at the top are a list of links, click on the one that says Referers and you will be taken to that section of that page. Again like awstats you will see links from your server and then some from outside sources, be sure to click on the ones that usually sound and look different from what you are used to. Sometimes these are spam sites, linking to your domain or direct linking you.



Latest Visitors

Probably the easiest to show you who could be direct linking files on your site would be the Latest Visitors feature in cPanel. Once logged in, scroll to the Logs category and click on the latest visitors icon. On that page, you will once again see a list of domains/subdomains under your account, click on the one you would like to view the "latest visitors".

on this, page you will notice boxes filled with information from image links to address and even IP address. Some may be grouped, while others can have information for one link.



If you notice one particular group of links, with lets say an image address from your files and then the referer link from an unknown website, then that basically means they are directlinking your files. Be sure to take screenshots and contact both the owner and host for it to be taken down immediately.

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Roxanne


Urban Roxy -Personal Blog
SH63 - the best darn shared server!

panache

why not just disable hot linking in cpanel and solve it without a fight..

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Roxy

You mean enable?

Well, I know that some sites, especially ones that offer free graphics (ie: Myspace graphics) can't do this, as they sometimes let visitors copy & paste codes to put on their webpages/profiles, but they don't want people to just hotlink their images everywhere, especially if they are redistributing their work as their own. It has happened.

It all depends on what people do with their websites. Some might find this useful, while others might not. =)

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Roxanne


Urban Roxy -Personal Blog
SH63 - the best darn shared server!

FyreFox

I believe he does mean disable in his context.

Now, if he would have said hot link protection, then yes, enable... but I think he's speaking generally... simply disable hot linking... by enabling HotLink Protection in cpanel.. problem solved.

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When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us. - Helen Keller

Roxy

Ah, you're right. I read it as hot link protection.

But like I said above, depends on what you do with your site.

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Roxanne


Urban Roxy -Personal Blog
SH63 - the best darn shared server!