How to stop someone taking your RSS Feed?

I got a forum that is copying everything that is posted on my forum. Before also i had problems with that now a Site copying the whole forum.

How to stop this?

You can use htaccess:

Code:

order allow,deny
deny from xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
allow from all

where xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is the ip of the crawler.

Isn't that (providing the ability to post your site's content) the entire point of RSS feeds?

{edit} scrub that, apparently doesnt work either.

Originally Posted by Ace Shattock

Isn't that (providing the ability to post your site's content) the entire point of RSS feeds?

So you mean to say I make another website with the name of anything and put eveyrthing from your site on RSS FEED auto posting on my site and you will be happy cus RSS FEED's point is posting your content ?

This is the problem with stock vbulletin code i should say.
Vbulletin should give us rock solid options on how to control the number of words/characters displayed in rss feeds.

What about sites like boardreader or boardtracker, they use our content to make money.
They pull content mainly via rss feeds and display this content on there adsense rich pages !!!!

We require some functionality which will restrict only title of thread going out via rss feeds and not the whole thread.

We require some functionality which will restrict only title of thread going out via rss feeds and not the whole thread.

XML and RSS1 feeds give out only the title, date and other minimalist information.

geekpoint.net/external.php?type=XML
geekpoint.net/external.php?type=RSS

RSS2 gives a lot more than that.

geekpoint.net/external.php?type=RSS2

You can limit the rss feed to just a certain amount of characters, rather than the full post.

Create a new plug in called "rss feed limiter"

Product Vbulletin

Hook location external_query

Plugin PHP Code

PHP Code:

unset($vbulletin->GPC['fulldesc']);
$vbulletin->options['threadpreview'] = 200;
$hook_query_fields .= ",LEFT(post.pagetext,400) AS message"; 


I searched high and low for the code on vbulletin once and from memory "200" is the amount of characters that get displayed.

The above works a treat

Lee G your code will not work, we are using vbulletin 3.6.5

Product = vbulletin
Hook location = external_query
execution order = 5
plugin code =

unset($vbulletin->GPC['fulldesc']);
$vbulletin->options['threadpreview'] = 200;
$hook_query_fields .= ",LEFT(post.pagetext,400) AS message";

plugin active = yes

But still wont work.

The only problem with RSS2 is, it pulls the entire post and we just cannot disable only rss2 :/

It worked for me after disabling and re-enabling feeds, Thank you Lee

Originally Posted by Notorious

It worked for me after disabling and re-enabling feeds, Thank you Lee

well still wont work after disabling and re-enabling feeds :(
this small plugin will be very handy, if someone can help on how to make it use.

Morever, i guess this modification is only restricting the thread view text to 200 or 400 chars/alphabets not the actual rss content ?
We want to restrict the actual data inside posts to 200 or 400 chars only.

If you cant get around the above, what about banning the sites ip from your server in the htaccess file

You can get their ip via Reverse IP DNS Tool- Free Reverse IP Lookup

Then put a ban on their ip.

My first instinct would be to use feedburner. Lately feedburner has been in the press and I think it may have some issues at the moment. I have yet to see it mess up on me though....
Someone else mentioned it in this thread:
Trimmed RSS Feeds Option

And vbulletin.org looks to have a tutorial
Integrate Feedburner RSS tools - replace the standard RSS feeds - vBulletin.org Forum

I only briefly looked at it but it looks simple enough with some minor template changes.

Anyways you'd use feedburner to shorten your feeds and their bandwidth to promote them

even after banning the IP of the blog which is copying my feeds are not stopping and they are gaining higher google rank.

Well that has to suck.