Lightspeed Hosted Gallery Thumbs/Pics Not Working

Here's a gallery to test -
http://www.lightspeedgalleries.com/f.../?r=000000-rev

Are you running any privacy or firewalling software? I noticed a few weeks ago that they seem to be blocking loads without a referer.

They actually send back an image of the red X; it's not IE visually displaying a 404.

BTW: that gallery works fine for me in a browser, but if I try to get my hosted gal script to pick up the images I just end up with a bunch of copies of a red X.

# wget http://www.lightspeedgalleries.com/fg/jor/gc553/images/3.jpg
--00:56:14-- http://www.lightspeedgalleries.com/fg/jor/gc553/images/3.jpg
=> `3.jpg'
Resolving www.lightspeedgalleries.com... done.
Connecting to www.lightspeedgalleries.com[66.115.150.252]:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 302 Found
Location: http://www.lightspeedgalleries.com/images/red_x.gif [following]
--00:56:14-- http://www.lightspeedgalleries.com/images/red_x.gif
=> `red_x.gif'
Connecting to www.lightspeedgalleries.com[66.115.150.252]:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 1,991 [image/gif]

00:56:14 (1.90 MB/s) - `red_x.gif' saved [1991/1991]


--------


# wget --header='Referer: http://www.lightspeedgalleries.com/' http://www.lightspeedgalleries.com/fg/jor/gc553/images/3.jpg
--00:56:43-- http://www.lightspeedgalleries.com/fg/jor/gc553/images/3.jpg
=> `3.jpg'
Resolving www.lightspeedgalleries.com... done.
Connecting to www.lightspeedgalleries.com[66.115.150.252]:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 80,952 [image/jpeg]


00:56:43 (775.05 KB/s) - `3.jpg' saved [80952/80952]


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If you don't present a referer, you get redirected to red_x.gif
If you do present a referer, you get the actual content you requested

I wonder how long it's been like this. I spent about 45 mins selecting images from their FHGs only to find that my script couldn't fetch them. I haven't bothered to look since. I'm sure other TGP scripts will have broken too.

works for me

Interesting.... When did they first start doing that ?? With my thumb script, I've been putting the link into a PHP file then linking to that file which redirects to the gallery. That was working up until now I don't think that their links will work in my script without the php, so I guess that I'll have to kiss Lightspeed goodbye when I was ranked 9th-12th in their webmaster ranks

I'm on my laptop now. I'll have to see what happens when I get back on my PC. My hard drive shit out on me 2 days ago. I'm actually in the middle of installing Windows on a new one as we speak. We'll see what happens when I get back online with that.

Gallery loaded a-ok for me.....

The gallery link you've listed above is working fine for me and sweetums, and we've had no other reports of others experiencing the problem. We are looking into this matter now and will have an answer for you shortly. Please feel free to contact sweetums (lisa at lightspeedcash.com) or myself if you're experiencing similar problems.

Hi Slick,

The problem you were experience is the result of our hotlinking protection. Several of our webmasters requested that we take action against people who were hotlinking illegitmately. However, that protection seems to be interfering with legit use so we've taking the hotlinking protection back off.

All should be working on your end now -- if not please don't hesitate to hit me

sweetums

Hey, thanks a million for taking care of that, I appreciate it. I see that the galleries are loading up fine now on my laptop.

If you feel on your end that it's ideal to have hotlink protection enabled, I understand that part and you can put it back up if that's the case.

Now that it is down will surely make my job as well as the jobs of other webmasters that use thumb scripts a lot easier since the scripts will now be able to pull up the pics to crop into thumbs. I know that when I'd add the galleries, I'd have to save and upload the pics to my server, then let the thumb script crop from there, this will be nice

Thanks again for everything Sweetums and RocHard, it's nice to see a sponsor on top of things

I'm glad to hear that the images are loading properly for you now Thank you for your understanding about the hotlink protection -- if we see that option being abused, we may have to address it again, but we'll find a way to work with our webmasters to make sure that it doesn't affect them adversely.

Thanks for bringing this to our attention...and if there's anything else please don't hesitate to catch me on ICQ

If you do decide to enable it again PLEASE tell your affiliates this time! I only discovered it by accident.

I know I don't send that many sales, but I am sure I was not the only guy inconvenienced that basically had to write off using the FHGs because of this protection...

I'll stick the LS FHGs back in my queue and add some more now.

BTW: you can still protect from hotlinking; just allow both "lightspeedgalleries.com" and a blank referer.