Protecting Images
 

I don't know if this has been brought up before so apologies if it has but I have just found a way around any permissions for looking at full sized images.

A member who only has permissions to see thumbs (as I want people to see the images we have in order to want to subscribe) asked for search permissions. Knowing he couldn't download the full sized I wondered why.

If you right click the thumb and select copy image location, and then replace the _thumb with _original you get the full sized image. Even if you aren't logged in at all.

This defeats the need to subscribe to access it.

I need to keep the original images so removing them is not an option, and I would prefer not to have to stop access to the gallery at all for members.

Is there a way around this? I already have .htaccess enabled.

the way vbgallery stores the images there is not really a way around, as the browser when calling the image directly does not send a refferer..

The only "trick" I can think of is to use a non permanent watermark.. without the watermark, to save ressources.
Do this: in gallery_global.php add: $ppg_options['gallery_echoimage'] = true;

So to be clear, this comes to:
open gallery/gallery_global.php and find:
and replace with:

havent tested it for gallery 2.5 but it should work like it does on 3.0
but the problem with the above method is that it doesn't take take into consideration the thumbnails.
Luc

The problem with the htaccess file and inline resizing in vbgallery 3.x is that as the browser pulls the bigger image with javascript the "no refferer" clause will apply also to users that are logged in.