I got an e-mail from my webhost today informing me that I was approaching my bandwidth limit for the month. I was quite surprised--I didn't think my website was that popular. After looking at the server log files, I found out that there are a lot--and I mean a lot--of people visiting my website about dragons. In order to cut down the traffic, I figured I am probably going to have to optimize some of my image files to reduce filesize. However, something else caught my eye while perusing the log files--people had been hotlinking to my images. (Hotlinking is also often called bandwidth theft--basically, other "webmasters" are showing my images on their servers, but I am the one who has to pay for the traffic.)

So, after a quick web search, I came across a website which explains how to prevent hotlinking using a .htaccess file. Then, voila, people are no longer hotlinking to my images--when they try to, they get a different image instead. Here are some before and after screenshots of one site in particular that was stealing my bandwidth:

Before--Notice the background picture of a wizard and some angry dragons:



After--Notice the lovely picture of a bandwidth-stealing hog: