Social technology site Digg.com is just one of those Web 2.0 sites that are fully jargon and buzzword-compliant. Being so popular, when somebody puts in a link to a small site/blog, that small site/blog/message board/wiki goes boom! So, imagine my surprise when I saw this on Digg:

Digg-Defender uses the WP-Cache system hook to redirect requests from high-traffic sites like Digg and Slashdot to a free global cache system.

Well, hecky darn! I need to get me some of that plug-in! However, when I went to look up the plugin, the site was down. Down in the comments, there were some mod_rewrite rules. That, I thought, would be something to try. After installing the rules, I had another quandary: how to get Dugg. Or /.ed. Or Farked. Or Boingboinged. My problem being there was no easy way, without blog-whoring, that I could get my site on one of these sites. Then I saw something in the sidebar. Digg shows people who've blogged the story. Trying this for the first time, I'm not sure how it will work. The main point is to get the mod_rewrite rules to cache the page so it doesn't take the page down. There's been a couple of instances when I'd love to post a comprehensive example of how to do something on Digg, but feared the hundreds of hits in just a few seconds that would burn the house down. If these few lines of code work, that won't be (much of) a problem (note the . in the site addresses):

RewriteEngine on RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} !^aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd$ RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !^Googlebot RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !^CoralWebPrx RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !(^|&)coral-no-serve$ RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://([^/]+.)?digg.com [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://([^/]+.)?slashdot.org [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://([^/]+.)?slashdot.com [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://([^/]+.)?fark.com [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://([^/]+.)?somethingawful.com [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://([^/]+.)?kuro5hin.org [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://([^/]+.)?engadget.com [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://([^/]+.)?boingboing.net [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://([^/]+.)?del.icio.us RewriteRule ^(.*)?$ http://macstansbury.com.nyud.net:8080/$1 [R,L]

To explain, the aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd is your IP address, so you are never sent to the Coral Cache, regardless of where you come from. Note that the last line is MacStansbury.com-specific; replace that line with your own site. If it is in a subdomain (like site.com/wp/ or blog.site.com), use that full name. I'm not fooling myself by thinking I'm gonna get Traffic Santa's blessing. But if a big site ever picks up on a story here (hah), the server will be shielded. And there's really no reason to include all those sites I listed, or to stop with just them. You can add whomever you think will, for good or for bad, link to you, and you'll be safer. A site that gets /.ed or Farked gets Sith Traffic, or traffic that does nothing but eat up resources, and doesn't really boost any of your site stats. That's not what you want. In fact, getting a link on a big site will bring you the most wretched form of scum and villainy in the known universe: spambots, and lots of them. That's the real danger of the big link, and why you really need to add this to your .htaccess file. Or, try your best to remain in obscurity. I've done that for years. Well, less 'tried,' and more 'forced against my will.' Your mileage may vary. This is a quick first step. There are other sites that I don't want sucking up my bandwidth. I've already sent a lot of traffic away through mod_rewrite. The worst thing about this would be if I make changes, they won't be reflected in the cache. If you want to see any updates to the story, remove the nyud.net:8080 from the address. UPDATE: Uh, no, no the sidebar thing on Digg does not send traffic to the right place. Back to the blog-whore. Or, to be more specific, not to the right page. It works just fine, only if the send traffic to anywhere but the front page.

status: published
lastmod: '2006-10-01T01:00:36.000Z'
author: John Stansbury
cms: wordpress
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  similarterms: http site rewritecond referer digg traffic sites page cache link rules rewrite story blog slashdot farked line macstansbury nyud problem