A few clients have recently complained about other blogs linking to their images and leeching off their bandwidth. Bandwidth is expensive and should be protected.

Here’s a working solution:

location ~ \.(jpg|jpeg|bmp|jif|bmp|gif|png)$ {
                root   /path/to/public_html/;
                valid_referers server_names none blocked;
                if ($invalid_referer) {
                return 403;
                }
            }

Some sites will need to allow some other sites to link to their images. If this is the case you can use the following rewrites – just modify and add domains as required

location ~ \.(jpg|jpeg|bmp|jif|bmp|gif|png)$ {
                root   /path/to/public_html/;
                valid_referers server_names none blocked www.theothersite.com *.theothersite.com;
                if ($invalid_referer) {
                return 403;
                }
            }

WHMCS is a very popular client management package with a slew of billing, support, and product management options. We use it here and have just recently moved our WHMCS site over to an nginx powered web server. The rewrites have all been worked out and since there’s nothing to be found on the subject via google we decided to share.

server {
            listen   80;
            server_name  my.uncorrupted.net;
            rewrite ^/(.*) https://my.uncorrupted.net/$1 permanent;
       }

server {
            listen   443;
            server_name my.uncorrupted.net;
            access_log /xxx/xxx/xxx/logs/access.log;
            error_log /xxx/xxx/xxx/logs/error.log;
	    	ssl on;
	    	ssl_certificate /xxx/xxx/xxx/.ssl/cert.pem;
	    	ssl_certificate_key /xxx/xxx/xxx/.ssl/key.pem;

            location /  {
                        root   /xxx/xxx/xxx/public_html/;
                        index  index.html index.php;
		    }

			location = /announcements {
        				rewrite ^  /announcements.php  last;
    		}

    		location /announcements/ {
        				rewrite  ^/announcements/([0-9]+)/[A-Za-z0-9_-]+\.html$ /announcements.php?id=$1 last;
    		}

    		location = /downloads {
        				rewrite ^  /downloads.php  last;
    		}

    		location /downloads/ {
        				rewrite ^/downloads/([0-9]+)/([^/]*)$ /downloads.php?action=displaycat&catid=$1 last;
    		}
			location = /knowledgebase {
       					rewrite ^  /knowledgebase.php  last;
    		}
			location /knowledgebase/ {
        				rewrite  ^/knowledgebase/([0-9]+)/[A-Za-z0-9_-]+\.html$ /knowledgebase.php?action=displayarticle&id=$1 last;
        				rewrite  ^/knowledgebase/([0-9]+)/([^/]*)$ /knowledgebase.php?action=displaycat&catid=$1 last;
    		}

            # pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server listening on 127.0.0.1:9000
            location ~ \.php$ {
            			fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
            			fastcgi_index index.php;
            			include /usr/local/nginx/conf/fastcgi_params;
            			fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME /xxx/xxx/xxx/public_html/$fastcgi_script_name;
            }
}

Gest of luck – if you run into any issues write us a comment and we’ll see if we can help you work it out.