mod_rewrite

So I added this “permaLink” thing to all my posts. It's no big deal, really, basically it's a permanent link to that specific post. Handy for copying the link and sending to someone to say “hey, look what this dummy gRegor said.” The comments link works equally well, but the URL doesn't look quite as elegant, plus search engines are picky about archiving links with question marks and ampersands in them. I'll spare you the geeky stuff as to why this is. :-]

So anyway, the way to make these permaLinks is to use this thing called mod_rewrite. I found something quite humorous regarding mod_rewrite today. [Again, sparing most of the geeky stuff] suffice it to say that it lets you do a lot of cool stuff with requests to your website. For example, any requests coming from a specific site, you can block altogether, or perform some other action. If you've ever had problems linking an image from another website, it's probably because they use mod_rewrite to block such things.

I came across this forum post from a guy who has some pictures of his BBQ grill on his website. Apparently an eBayer ended up using this guy's picture for the eBay listing. This guy decided to have some fun with the eBayer, though, and used mod_rewrite to automatically send a different picture.

Instead of this

The eBay listing has this

See the eBay listing for yourself

It doesn't appear the eBayer ever caught on, which makes it even funnier.

[Edit: it appears the eBayer did catch on and fix it, so the eBay listing is corrected now, but it wasn't the other day.]

[Edit 2: nevermind that, apparently they didn't catch on and it's still showing up on the eBay listing. heh heh]