TWC will prevent hotlinking of its freeware release download files

[HappyAndyK]

Too many bloggers/website want to directly hotlink to the TWC freeware .zip download file, without wanting to accord TWC a product-homepage backlink.

Too much bandwidth being lost, with no commensurate increase in traffic

So now TWC will prevent hotlinking. All such direct download links will get diverted to TWC home page.

I did this 3 days back ...

A pity I had to do this but I hope folks will understand ...

[nitinagarwal1988]

That's a great move by you. This is necessary as well, I appreciate this!

[johnny.rotton]

couldn't agree with this more. I would do the same in your shoes.

[Corrine]

Good move! (Perhaps this is also a lesson to TWC members not to hotlink to images hosted on other sites. It costs them bandwidth as well.)

[rkonit]

Well done !!! andy ... Its required.

[riteshtechie]

Well done Andy....

But it would be better if you have redirected them to http://www.thewindowsclub.com/list-f...e-windows-club

[SysOp]

... and the results are showing already

Well done Andy....

But it would be better if you have redirected them to List of freeware releases from The Windows Club | The Windows Club

IMHO, TWC is not only about freewares. There's much more. Freewares is just one of the things. So home page is the right place to get redirected.

[Pankaj]

If you link to homepage, ppl hav to search for the app, and they may miss it, but if you link to the freeware page all the apps will be seen on that page and then it becomes easier to download it.

[MrMBerman]

IMHO, TWC is not only about freewares. There's much more. Freewares is just one of the things. So home page is the right place to get redirected.

Agreed....

[HappyAndyK]

Actually this thought had occurred to me too but I linked to TWC home. But I am now seeing my web stats and while there were only 10-20 searches a day on TWC earlier, there are now a whopping 400-500 searches being conducted in a day. This means that guys who click on the download .zip files end up landing on the homepage and then maybe some of them do a search and some just dont bother. I dont want to inconvenience the visitors.

In view of this, in the interest of the convenience of the visitors, I decided to link it to the freeware page. That way two things happen: He finds the app page easily and he gets to see our other apps too

Landing on this freeware page makes it easy to locate the desired app which he wants to download. Lets see how this works out for a few days ...

... and just in case anyone is interested in knowing how the traffic has increased in the last 3 days, after SysOp stopped direct linking, see this: