Changing uploaded image filename

  • Resolved bibblybob

    (@bibblybob)


    2 years, 10 months ago

    Hello all,

    Hope someone can advise on a little issue. I want to prevent hotlinking of images on my site, so I’ve tried a few options including plugins and hotlink protection via my web host. The problem with this is that social shares are affected seem to be somewhat affected. I’d rather have hotlinking protection off and have social shares of my blog posts looking ‘prettier’ on social media.

    So let’s say I have hotlink protection off, I still want to do something about those pesty sites that have been hotlinking my images. I figured that if I make a slight change to the image filename in the WordPress Media Library, this would change the URL and those unscrupulous sites won’t hog my bandwidth. The issue here is that I can’t see where to change an image URL in the WordPress back end. I tried to do this in my web host’s File Manager section and this too doesn’t seem to have much impact.

    Any idea how I can change the image urls on my site without having to delete and reupload the images?

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  • Hi, @bibblybob:

    There are plugins available that can help with media renaming. However, changing image URLs over time could be pretty tedious, assuming you keep open URLs for social media links. Monitoring for those images and playing “whack-a-mole” with bad actors is not much fun.

    Instead, you might consider looking into customization options for hotlink prevention plugins. Check out the “Support” tab on plugin pages, and search their forums about allowing multiple domains. This may also be referred to as “whitelisting”.

    It may take some research and testing to find which exact domains to allow. Reviewing your analytics and server logs can help identify those “friendly” domains. You may find it’s much easier to maintain a list of allowed domains than to block or deal with the bad ones.

    Once the plugin is configured for multiple allowed domains, then “stolen” linked images will break on those other sites. Then they’ll be someone else’s problem ??

    If you find you’re not satisfied with what plugins (or manual .htaccess edits) may have to offer, many CDN services offer hotlink protection.

    Thread Starter bibblybob

    (@bibblybob)

    Thanks @ironprogrammer for your advice!

    • This reply was modified 2 years, 10 months ago by bibblybob.
Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
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