Ruined My Life

Restricting Access by IP Address and Referer Using .htaccess

Blogged in Web Design, Internet by Matt on Wednesday June 21, 2006

Anyone running a blog or a website that has an open commenting system is sure to be more then familiar with spam. WordPress’s Akismet service works great, however if you have content on your blog or any website that isn’t protected by Akismet you’re bound to be hit by spam.

There are numerous ways to restrict access to your website PHP, .htaccess, mod_rewrite and so forth, however in this example we’re going to use a .htaccess file to deny acccess by IP Address. Below you will find the code to paste into your .htaccess file to restrict access. Whenever a user visits your website from the IP or IP Blocks listed below they will be redirected to your 403 Forbidden page.

order allow,deny

deny from 59.34.113.
deny from 60.176.134.
deny from 60.178.66.
deny from 61.149.45.
allow from all

To make the above function correctly simply copy and paste the above text into your .htaccess file, once updated upload the file to your webserver. How the above code work is as follows; the user connects to your website, .htaccess tells Apache to deny the IP addresses listed in the “deny from xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx” line, once denied the web server send them to your 403 Forbidden page. By adding a full IP range of XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX you block from that IP only, however by adding only XXX.XXX.XXX. you block from that the entire range that follows the XXX.XXX.XXX. . Basically the “blank space” is a wild card. Be careful when you begin blocking large ranges of IP Addresses, as some countries/telecomms may only have a few IP Blocks.

By using the same syntax as the code above you can also block users based by referer. Many spammers crosslink between numerous sites to boost their search engine rankings. So in short to block by referer we use the following code.

order allow,deny

deny from www.nasty.com
deny from .nasty.com
allow from all

Just as before we’ve blocked users coming from the above referer. Before you implement any of these changes be sure you double check all referers as well as IP’s that you plan to block. By making a small typo you can eliminate access to your website all together.

If you’d like a semi-thorough list of IP Addresses that are of confirmed spammers that have got around Akismet, you can click here to get a copy of the current .htaccess I use on all of my websites. Use this at your own discretion!

Popularity: 67% [?]

Guild Wars: Breaking Away the MMORPG Subscription Fee

Blogged in MMORPGs, Games by Matt on Friday June 2, 2006

In mid and late 2004 the buzz started building around a MMORPG that promised to bring MMORPG game play and elements to players without a monthly subscription fee. Lofty goals and claims for a starter company, however some of these starters were lead programmers and designers from the brain trust known as Blizzard. This ambitious title is none other then Guild Wars by ArenaNet.

The beautiful graphics of Guild Wars, plenty of Blooming and Blurring to go around!

Guild Wars was billed to be a MMORPG that featured all the consistent updates and content additions as “traditional MMORPGs” all while managing to keep a more casual approach to MMORPGs without the cost of a monthly fee. Did ArenaNet deliver on their promise of making Guild Wars play and feel like a subscription based MMORPG? Depending on the elements you’d like to look at, the idea of Guild Wars being a subscriptionless MMOPRG can vary greatly.

(more…)

Popularity: 38% [?]

Trackback · 2 Comments »

World of Warcraft and It’s Miss at PvP Combat

Blogged in MMORPGs, Games by Matt on Friday May 26, 2006

Note: This is part one out of a series of articles, titled “PvP Combat, Release Dates, Innovation and MMORPGs; A Death Sentence“, covering some of the aspects and short falls that I feel numerous MMORPGs have been plagued by.

The debate whether game developers rush products to achieve an optimal release date has always been a hot bed for discussion, however in MMORPGs it seems skipping some small yet vital additions to the game can make or break your release. Back in later 2004 we saw two should be giants going head to head, World of Warcraft and Everquest 2.

When World of Warcraft was announced the gaming community was sucked up in a cyclone of press and hype. Could Blizzard deliver a MMORPG that would catch on with the hardcore gamers as well as with the more casual players, in this case the Blizzard audience Warcraft and Diablo, while staying true to it’s roots of being a highly polished titled developed by Blizzard? The buzz from the closed beta of World of Warcraft was one of a highly refined MMORPG experience even in it’s infants stages, however there was still that group of players who cried for balance before release. Everquest 2 was in development head to head with World of Warcraft. As the two were developed, the open beta/stress tests were fast approaching.

World of Warcraft, Blizzard’s amazing entrance to the MMORPG Scene.

As the beta test (or Open Stress Test) for World of Warcraft carried on, Sony Online Entertainment announced they would be releasing Everquest 2 in the middle of Novemeber 2004, almost 6 months ahead of the expected release date. Was SOE feeling the dragon of World of Warcraft breathing down the neck of its lovechild Everquest 2? The majority sure seem to think so.

(more…)

Popularity: 28% [?]

New Design

Blogged in Web Design, Internet by Matt on Thursday May 25, 2006

So I finally decided it was time for a new look after almost two years using the same old rather dull layout. It was neat when I first downloaded the theme and installed, but over time it got very old and boring. The design will be under constant tweaking for the next couple days I’d reckon. Decided to sit my ass down and implement a layout with Wordpress. Really, I must say it really wasn’t that bad, just pretty damn monotenous.

Popularity: 18% [?]

Spore Gameplay Video

Blogged in Computers, Games, Internet by Matt on Thursday March 2, 2006

I was browsing Google Videos and found this Spore Gameplay Video. Spore is a new game coming out that is created by Will Wright. You start out as a single celled organism and evolve on out from there. Simply amazing. Check out the video.

Popularity: 20% [?]

Image Preloading Script

Blogged in Programming, Web Design, Internet by Matt on Thursday December 1, 2005

In my previous post regarding CSS Image Rollovers there was question asked whether or not the image is preloaded or not. The image is not preloaded, so on the first visit to the page the image will have to load, causing a brief blank spot to be where the button is. To resolve this we simply need to use a JavaScript based Image Preloading Script which can be found below.

var imageload=new Array()
function preload(){
for (i=0;i
imageload[i]=new Image()
imageload[i].src=arguments[i]
}
}

preload(”http://www.name.com/name.jpg”,”http://www.name.com/name2.jpg”, “http://www.name.com/name3.jpg”)

When you use the above script, be sure to change the location of the images in the above URLs to reflect where your images are located.

Popularity: 8% [?]

CSS Image Rollover Effects

Blogged in Web Design, Internet by Matt on Tuesday November 29, 2005

Note: This is a technique to develop CSS Image Rollovers, however it isn’t the most effective nor correct, for a more indepth, correct technique please use the following to create CSS Image Rollovers.

So I’ve been working on a layout for a website a couple of guys and I are putting together to sell independent games online with. I, myself tend to try and stick with XHTML when designing a site. I’ve heard of people creating Image Rollovers using CSS, and decided to try and figure this out myself, and what do you know, I suceeded! Good bye days of using JavaScript to complete such a feature, and hello my good friend Cascading Style Sheets.

The process for creating image rollovers in CSS is simple, and I’m gonna throw the code and technique in here so all who want to see can. If there are any questions drop a comment and I’ll see what I can do for you.

Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) Image Rollover Code

/* This is the Default Button */
div#button a{
font-family: Arial, Helvetica, Verdana;
font-size: 12px;
color: black;
text-align: center;
width: 100px;
height: 20px;
background-image:url(images/button1.jpg);
background-repeat: no-repeat;
}

/* This is the Highlighted Button */
div#button a:hover, div#button a.current{
background-image:url(images/button2.jpg);
color: black;
}

Pop the above code in your style sheet. In this case, create a DIV with the name of “button”. Inside of the DIV named button you will want to put each element you want to have an Image Rollover on inside of an anchor, you know the good ol “a href” tag. Once that’s done, tweak the CSS to your likings, make sure you change the image names to reflect what you are doing, and you’ll be good to go.

Popularity: 21% [?]

Trackback · 4 Comments »

Doom Movie Trailer Released

Blogged in FPS, Games by Matt on Friday August 26, 2005

The Doom movie trailer has been released today. It’s avaliable at Yahoo Movies or by clicking here.

Now that I’ve seen the trailer, I can honestly say I’m not anymore estatic about seeing the movie as I was when I read about it before. The settings in the trailer remind me alot of Doom 3, as far as the architecture indoors and the look of Mars goes, however the “monsters” in this one are spawned from a genetics project gone wry, instead of being beastily demons from hell!What the hell is that? The people that Doom is marketed towards are the gamers, who have played Doom since it’s beginning, at least the older crowd in that case. Regardless the plot has been changed. To top all of that off, it looks like there’ll be First-Person footage in the movie, as long as the trailer uses actual footage. I don’t want to watch a god damn movie in the first person, if I wanted to see that, I’d play the god awful game. As for my recommendation of Doom the Movie, I’ll probably wait and download it. Yar!

Popularity: 18% [?]

Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory

Blogged in FPS, Games by Matt on Sunday July 17, 2005

Just the other day at work, Bill, one of the computer techs at my work, and myself were talking about what First Person Shooters we like. We both came to an agreement that we both prefer the faster paced, more deathmatch like FPS games, Quake 2, Quake 3, Team Fortress, Call of Duty and so forth. When talking about the games I was remembered a great game I played for a good summer in 2003, this game, Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory (ET).

If you don’t know what ET is, it was scheduled to be a Multiplayer Addon for Return to Castle Wolfenstein, instead they decided to release it as a free, open source game. The gameplay is VERY similar to Team Fortress. ET runs on the Quake 3 engine, so it’s nice looking but nothing cutting edge. The gameplay is top notch though, if you remember playing TF for QuakeWorld then you’ll feel at home here, however if you’re a Counter-Strike Kiddie, this will be a new experience for you. Out with the “faux-realistic” FPS gameplay of CS, and in with the Team Objective Based game with tons of DM flavor. Don’t get me wrong CS is a good game, however it doesn’t have the appeal for me. I much prefer the Fast, Deathmatch like gameplay of ET over CS anyday.

If you’ve never played Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory be sure to give it a try, and if you’re an OG QW:TF player you’ll be pleasently suprised, this I gurantee you!

Popularity: 17% [?]