make403/Location
And I do a temporary redirect from the borked URL..

I could be completely in the wrong place, i was told this was the correct place though. I have a few questions about hotlinking and .htaccess. I wrote this tutorial here: http://techystuff.info/?p=86 Can anyone tell me if it is correct?

.htaccess

.htaccess is used for apache config directives - if it is not readable, apache can't use it - if you don't want to use htaccess at all, then set AllowOverride None in httpd.conf or http://httpd.apache.org/docs/configuring.html#htaccess or http://httpd.apache.org/docs/howto/htaccess.html or or see htaccess purpose

htaccess purpose

Don't confuse htaccess with password-protection. The purpose of htaccess is to enable users to configure apache locally for their own directories, when they have no privilege to do so in httpd.conf. Using htaccess slows the server. Also rewriterules and redirects are more complex in
htaccess

so not the same .htaccess?

no idea

http://ryanpartington.com/article111.php/185 hw comes that page is missing its skin?

ok, thank you all! sorry for intruding