Change site by IP location

[josemanuel]

I wonder if anyone may have a way to set an osCMax site to give a different or screen when someone from foreign IP loads the site? I want to prevent my competition hiring cheap overseas labor to copy my hard work.

Anyone?

[jpf]

You can block a range of IP addresses. But that will not solve your problem. What is the chance what your seeing is search spiders?

My suggestions is to make your hard work - unusable for anyone else!

-Watermark all your graphics.
-Make your descriptions your own. (reference or put your name/trademark in your text everywhere possible)
-Customize your site.

This is just a start!

However the ONLY way to stop people from coping your work is to install your website on a CD - unplug your PC - drill holes in the CD (while it is still in the the drive), bury the whole think in your back yard and pore a cement pad on top of it.

Good luck!

[josemanuel]

You are right about protecting the site, however.... We have a custom module to calculate prices and other elements, which might be desireable.

Yes, these are not spiders- a referral link from rentacoder.com and a guru.com.

How can I block a range of ip?

[jpf]

If you are running Apache, then go into the catalog directory, then edit or add in a file called .htaccess, add the following:

Order Allow,Deny
Allow from all
Deny from 125.1.2.3

If that doesn't work, you can also drop this block into your httpd.conf file, if you're comfortable editing that file.

Once it's installed, you'll want to change the 125.1.2.3 to the IP address of the offending party (look in your log files for that information).

To ban a range it is easies to chop one or two digits off --- ie put : 125.1.2

To be a bit more mean...

You can expand this to block multiple IPs or domain names and create a special error page. Create and upload a special page, in this example banned.htm, then use this in .htaccess:

ErrorDocument 403 /banned.htm
order deny,allow
deny from 125.1.2.3
<files banned.htm>
allow from all
</files>

Hope this helps you solve the problem.

Good luck!

[jpf]

PS - you could put the domain name instead - if you know it.... (then IP does not mater...)