Welcome to this installment of Bloggy Thursdays, where I share with my fellow bloggers tips and tutorials to maximize and better your blog. While I do not consider myself an expert, I do like to think that after 10+ years of blogging — in addition to my technical knowledge — I know more than the average blogger when it comes to making your blog more appealing to readers.

Do you have any comments, questions, or topics you’d like to see covered here? Please send me a message via my contact form. Enjoy!

What is hotlinking, and why is it bad?

Hotlinking occurs when other sites link directly to the files (usually images) hosted on your site from their own blog, message board posts, and such.

While there are legitimate uses of hotlinking such as YouTube videos, the problem with unauthorized hotlinking is that it is essentially bandwidth theft. Hotlinking increases your server load — especially if the hotlinked image was posted on a popular website — and decreases the loading speed of your own site.

Additionally, if you use original images for your blog (e.g., you are a photographer or an illustrator), hotlinking can be especially annoying because in almost all cases, the person who hotlinks does so without obtaining permission first.

Luckily, there are different ways that bloggers can prevent hotlinking of their images.

Option 1: Edit your .htaccess file

The first, and probably the most difficult method, is to edit your .htaccess file. To find out if you already have an .htaccess file, navigate to your blog’s root directory using an FTP client and simply look for it. (Note: you may need to select an option that allows you to view hidden files first.) If you don’t have one, you can easily create one by using a text editor to create a blank document, naming it .htaccess, and uploading it to your blog’s root directory.

Important: Before making any changes to an existing .htaccess file, be sure to save a copy of it first!

The next step is to copy and paste the following to your .htaccess file (if there’s already stuff on your .htaccess file, add it to the bottom of the file):

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http(s)?://(www\.)?yourdomain.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http(s)?://(www\.)?anotherdomain.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule \.(jpg|jpeg|png|gif)$ http://www.yourdomain.com/hotlink.gif [NC,R,L]

Now this is where you substitute what is on the code above with your own information:

Lines 3 and 4 are specifying which domains should be exempt from your hotlinking rule. So you want to replace the words in blue with your own domain (don’t include the www because that’s already included in the code).

Then, you want to replace the words in orange with any other domains that should be able to hotlink to your images. This should include feed aggregators like FeedBurner. If you have more than one domain on this list, simply copy & paste the same line, replacing the orange URL with your desired domains.

The words in pink are stating which file extensions should be included in your hotlinking rule. Most people will not need to edit this part, but feel free to delete and add to it as you wish.

Lastly, the words in green is a URL to an image that should be displayed when someone tries to (unsuccessfully) hotlink to your site. For example, the graphic that I use for my hotlinked images is:

Alternatively, if you just want an error 403 Forbidden instead of an image, you can replace the last line with the following code:

RewriteRule \.(jpg|jpeg|png|gif)$ – [F]

So, using all the rules above, this is what I have included in my .htaccess file:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http(s)?://(www\.)?geekinheels.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http(s)?://(www\.)?google.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http(s)?://(www\.)?feedburner.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http(s)?://(www\.)?feeds2.feedburner.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http(s)?://(www\.)?yahoo.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http(s)?://(www\.)?msn.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http(s)?://(www\.)?bing.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http(s)?://(www\.)?facebook.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http(s)?://(www\.)?pinterest.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http(s)?://(www\.)?bloglines.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http(s)?://(www\.)?feedly.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http(s)?://(www\.)?netvibes.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule \.(jpg|jpeg|png|gif)$ http://www.geekinheels.com/images/hotlinking.gif [NC,R,L]

Notice that I have included all other sites I would like to allow hotlinking back to my blog, such as Facebook and Pinterest. Can you think of any other sites I should add to this list?

Option 2: Use cPanel’s Built-In Hotlink Protection

This next option is much simpler than using .htaccess, but it has two drawbacks:

1. You have to host your blog with a company that gives you access to cPanel
2. You have a bit less control

If you do have access to your cPanel (the URL to your cPanel is almost always yourwebsite.com/cpanel), navigate on over to the “Security” section and click on the “HotLink Protection” icon.

From there, you need to enable hotlink protection by clicking on the “Enable” button at the top of the page, fill in the fields as directed, and hit the “Submit” button at the bottom. You can see that if you carefully compare this method and the .htaccess method above, there are definite similarities.

And, because the full list of URLs I’ve used is not viewable in the above screenshot:

http(s)?://(www\.)?bing.com
http(s)?://(www\.)?bloglines.com
http(s)?://(www\.)?facebook.com
http(s)?://(www\.)?feedburner.com
http(s)?://(www\.)?feedly.com
http(s)?://(www\.)?feeds2.feedburner.com
http(s)?://(www\.)?geekinheels.com
http(s)?://(www\.)?google.com
http(s)?://(www\.)?msn.com
http(s)?://(www\.)?netvibes.com
http(s)?://(www\.)?pinterest.com
http(s)?://(www\.)?yahoo.com

Option 3: Use a hotlink protection plugin

Once again, this is where WordPress comes in handy. Just doing a quick search for “hotlink” in the WordPress Plugins Directory returns several plugins that can help you achieve what I have outlined in options 1 and 2. The three most popular ones seem to be:

• Automatic Image Hotlink Protection
• Configurable Hotlink Protection
• PictPocket

Please keep in mind that I have not tested these plugins myself, so please use them at your own risk.

Additional Information

The final step in setting up hotlink protection is to test it. You can do that by visiting one of many sites that allow this, such as http://www.htaccesstools.com/test-hotlink-protection/

If you do not run a self-hosted blog, there’s a good chance that you do not need to worry about bandwidth theft since most platforms like WordPress.com and Blogger do not place bandwidth limitations.

However, if you would still like to keep the media on your blog accessible via your blog only, you can host the files in a separate file hosting service and change its privacy settings accordingly. For example, Blogger users can set their blog media folder in Picasa to private. Another great way to help discourage hotlinking — as well as intellectual property theft — is to watermark your images.

 I hope that was helpful and informative. Please let me know if you have any questions!

In her Venus project, Italian artist Anna Utopia Giordano asks the question “What would have happened if the aesthetic standard of our society had belonged to the collective unconscious of the great artists of the past?”, digitally altering great classic works of art to better fit today’s waif-like standards.

I will be completely honest; some of the subjects of the paintings do look better after their waists have been tucked in and their breasts made fuller, like Richard Westall’s The Power of Venus. However, others — like Boticelli’s The Birth of Venus — just look plain wrong.

What are your thoughts on Ms. Giordano’s work?

Via Flavorwire.

A fanatical Hunger Games fan by the name of V. Arrow has thoughtfully and carefully put together a map of Panem’s 13 districts, taking into account all historical accounts from the books, and merging what has been revealed about each district with the typography and natural resources of North America.

Click on over to aimmyarrowshigh’s LiveJournal, where she details the reasonings and processes that went into developing this magnificent map.

She also has a small FAQ section which answers, “Why don’t you leave big blank spaces of empty land between the Districts? What about the Wilderness?” and “Y U NO HAVE MORE OF CANADA AND MEXICO?”

Via Nerd Approved.

A few years ago, J casually said to me, “You know, you should really make your blog more mobile device friendly.”

“But that might ruin the design! And you know how hard I worked on it. Besides, less than 1% of my visitors are using a mobile device when they browse on over.”

Did I mention that J is a software engineer and tester? That he not only once worked for the big G, he is always up-to-date (and most of the times, ahead of the curve) on the latest web trends and companies — e.g., signed up for Yelp and Twitter long before anyone else I knew even heard of them, correctly predicting that they would “blow up” — and is the go-to guy in our social circle for any web/tech-related questions?

So of course, being his wife, I completely ignored his advice.

Flash forward to now. “Responsive” is currently the hottest word in web design. Web Design Ledger predicts:

Eventually, we’ll all stop talking about responsive web design – not because it will go away, but because it will become what’s expected.

And wouldn’t you know it? Currently, about 20% of my blog’s visitors hail from a mobile device.

So what does J do when I tell him that I’m thinking about a more responsive design for my blog?

“Responsive web design? Isn’t that an old concept?”  

I hate it when he’s right.

How responsive web design should work — see how the content shifts
depending on what type of device you are using to view the website?
(image source)

So, in order to keep this blog current and more user-friendly to those who visit using tablets or mobile phones —

And because I’m already hankering for a change after just seven months with this current design —

I have decided that a site redesign is in order.

I want to get this done as quickly as possible (i.e., within the next month) before J’s parents go back to Hong Kong and I will have no help with the two kids.

And here is where YOU, the readers, can help!

There are currently two logistics to this redesign I have not yet quite figured out.

The first: I am seriously thinking of displaying partial posts for the front page of the blog. The reason for this is because my posts tend to be long, and/or feature large or multiple images which significantly slow down the loading speed of the site. Having partial posts on the front page will not only ensure faster loading time, but will also allow users to more easily scroll down and see additional content.

However, I personally hate it when the sites I visit do this because I would much rather see everything on one page.

What do you think? Do you prefer partial posts on the
front page, or full posts as I have now? Please vote below!

(Please keep in mind that my RSS feeds will not be affected by this change. Subscribers will still be able to see full posts when reading from Google Reader or other RSS feed aggregators.)

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The second issue involves the logo. Although I have extensive experience with helping others with their logos and branding, designing a logo is not my strong suit. And I strongly believe that a good logo is important to any brand.

I also believe that a good logo can help me with the redesign of this site by providing a certain “look and feel” and pointing me in the right direction.

So I have decided to make the investment by hiring someone to design a new logo for Geek in Heels.

I have already posted an ad on oDesk, but I was wondering..

Are you, or someone you know, interested in
designing a logo for Geek in Heels? 

Since I am short on cash, I can only pay the designer $100 USD. However, I can also offer on top of that a full year’s 160×100 or 160×200 (your choice) sidebar banner ad for FREE. You can look at my site stats on my sponsorships page.

My only requirements are that the applicants should have examples of logos they have designed in the past, and that the final logo should be provided to me in EPS format.

If you are interested, please leave a comment to this post, or shoot me a message via my contact form.

As always, thanks for reading, and I can’t wait to unveil to my readers my new logo and site redesign!

Most of my readers know that we have been teaching Claire three languages since she was born. And at this point, at 16 months of age, she understands Cantonese Chinese the best, and more than half the words she speaks are Cantonese.

I have no problem with this. I believe that Chinese — regardless of the dialect — is one of the most difficult languages to learn, and that our children having a good foundation in Chinese will not only help them more easily learn additional languages in the future (because you use both hemispheres of the brain with Chinese and other tonal languages), it may also be benficial if they choose to study music.

I actually took two semesters of Mandarin Chinese in college, but I only recall a few phrases here and there.  However, I still remember my very first class clearly, when my professor showed us how, by saying “ma” in different tones, you can ask, “Did mother scold the horse?”

媽駡馬嗎?
(mā mà mă ma?)

Despite my musical training, I still have difficulty differentiating between the different tonal sounds in the Chinese language. And while Mandarin only has 4 tones, Cantonese has between 6 and 9. The exact number depends on whom you ask, which makes it that much more difficult in this blogger’s opinion.

Perhaps it is easier to learn music if a tonal language is your first language, than vice-versa? That, or I am seeking justification for my difficulty in understanding Chinese. (But then again, I have always been horrible with languages in general.)

Anyway, the real reason for this post is because I recently came across a nifty scan from a Chinese instructional book which illustrates just how difficult Chinese can be:

(image source)

And, just in case anyone is curious, the name of the poem is “Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den” by Zhao Yuanren. According to Redditor robo_t:

The poem was written in the early 20th century as both an: 1. argument against the romanization of classical Chinese 2. argument for the romanization of modern vernacular Chinese

Writing out classical Chinese often yields results like “shi shi shi shi shi shi shi”, thus making it completely uncomprehensible. A few literary movements in the early twentieth century moved Chinese away from using a single syllable per word to having compound words. This language development can actually be credited with helping modernize China and closing the gap between the literary elites and the masses.

Example: Classical – 睡 – shui – to sleep Modern – 睡觉 – shui jiao – to sleep

Adding a second character clarifies the meaning by adding a verb-noun phrase!

Apparently, most Chinese people would only understand this poem if they read it, not if they heard it.