The Key To Being Anti-Social – How To Deal With Diggs, Slashdot, Delicious, ect

We had a few off the wall questions during last weeks radio show about how I deal with digg and the other social networks. Well I have a dedicated server that I use pretty much just for my blog so its not that hard however some people made the point that most bloggers that do shared hosting or whatever just cant handle the traffic that a DIGG or something brings and that my friends is just not planning for success!

If your server is having problems dealing with diggs put this code in your .htaccess and it will redirect them to a cached mirror of your page.

!start code

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} !^192.168.1.2$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !^CoralWebPrx
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !(^|&)coral-no-serve$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(www.)?digg.com [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(www.)?slashdot.org [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(www.)?slashdot.com [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(www.)?fark.com [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(www.)?somethingawful.com [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(www.)?engadget.com [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(www.)?boingboing.net [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(www.)?del.icio.us
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.shoemoney.com.nyud.net:8080/$1 [R,L]

!end code

What you need to edit:

RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} !^192.168.1.2$ – This should be your ip so you dont see the cached version

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.shoemoney.com.nyud.net:8080/$1 [R,L] – change the shoemoney.com part to our website but make sure you keep the nyud.net:8080 part intact.

How this works? Your webserver sees the referal from the social site and points people to the mirrored cached copy of your website thus not hammering on yours.

(This tip is also included in a lot of digg comments)

For the demonstration of this article I will use it. If you come from the digg link you will be redirected (dont feel that you need to digg this article though)