[Sussex] Apache throttling/fair use

[John Crowhurst]

> Alan, Mark, Thomas
>
> Thanks for advice, looks like I have some RTFMing to do :-)
>
> Can these help with a user making a copy of each page:
>
>   i.e
>      1: Loads a pages
>      2: Selects save
>      3: Clicks on link to the next page
>      4: Goto 2 until all pages saved

You can't easily stop this from happening, there are ways to encode the
HTML so that when its saved it becomes meaningless.

> He also wants to allow prospective new clients a limited access to the
> site.  They would be allowed to view a few pages per day.  Can any of
> this stuff help here, or do I need a new mod (maybe one I wrote myself).

Very simple solution:

Create a script that uses a database to log the date, user and counter to
the number of times the user has looked at pages for that date. Increment
the counter on each page until the cutoff period is reached and send the
user to a page telling them they have exceeded their viewing pleasure for
the day.

At the start of the day, the old entries are deleted (anything with the
previous date in) so the users start afresh every day. You can either do
this from cron or the script can do it for you.

-- 
John