Posted: Mon Aug 27, 2007 7:56 am Post subject: Direct linking by third-party download sites
This seems to happen with every new NeoOffice release and it has happened again: some download sites are directly linking to a particular mirror's binaries.
Not only does this overwhelm a mirror, but I have noticed that some of these sites have a bad habit of direct linking to only one platform's binaries and then advertising it as "the Mac OS X version". This, in turn, doubly stresses a mirror as people end up downloading a binary that won't install on their machine.
So, to limit this abuse of our mirrors, I have added the appropriate Apache .htaccess files to our rsync server so that our mirrors will redirect to the NeoOffice or RetroOffice download page (whichever is applicable) if the binary download request is clearly from a server other than one of our neooffice.org servers.
Only a few of the mirrors have this in place right now. However, I expect that the change will roll out to all of the mirrors in the next 48 hours or so.
Joined: May 25, 2003 Posts: 4752 Location: Santa Barbara, CA
Posted: Mon Aug 27, 2007 8:31 am Post subject:
In addition, if anyone is making any posts or announcements that deep link to the download page on the web server, remember to delete the language code in the URL, e.g. use the language neutral URL:
Then people will be able to see the instructions in their native language, if available. Thanks so much again to all of our volunteers for making all of these wonderful translations!
MacUpdate is by far the worst offender here; I'm really so @#$#@$#@ off at them I wish their site would just die. They're a PITA and are so obnoxious and hostile to developers and refuse to change download listings when we ask them. They do this to everyone, not just Neo (we fight them with Camino, too, and we have a far less complex download page setup--just a single url that connects you to a mirror, and a real Universal build), so I can only assume it's hubris.
I'm glad you've figured out a way to stop them; I do wish they'd hurry up and die.
Smokey
/maybe this belongs in Ranting? _________________ "[...] whether the duck drinks hot chocolate or coffee is irrelevant." -- ovvldc and sardisson in the NeoWiki
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