.._____________________________..
./=============================\.
((   Text files: your window   ))
||   to a catch-free website!  ||
||         by Axion            ||
||   axionrising@hotmail.com   ||
((     http://axiontel.tk      ))
`\=============================/'
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Introduction:
~~~~~~~~~~~~
I've noticed over the last few years that as the web gets more
and more commercial, you're seeing far fewer "free" webspace
providers out there; and the ones that still exist are often
very annoying to use - what with the growing number of forced
pop-ups & hotlinking restrictions for image files...

Being the cheap bastard that I am, I've never been able to
just give up and PAY for web-hosting services, so I've been
stuck having to settle for 3'rd rate hosts like 0catch.com
and Geocities.com for my websites. Sadly, my penny-pinching
ways have meant that my website has been littered with ads
for webcams and online casinos. On top of this frustration,
most of these free providers have filters to prevent people
from hotlinking to images hosted on their servers. Now, I
don't know about you, but my idea of a good time on a Friday
night consists of hanging out at message boards and posting
photoshopped pictures of George Bush with a penis in his
ear. So obviously, this whole hotlinking issue is an ongoing
battle for me.

Well, it just so happens that I've found a solution to both
of these problems, and the key lies within the most basic
of all computer files, the unformatted .txt file...


Problem 1 - Hotlinking:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
As I've said, I have a real penchant for going to message
boards and posting animated gifs of Optimus Prime trans-
forming. Using your average free webspace provider (Geo-
cities in this example), their servers' software would
detect that you were hotlinking to an image file, and
you'd just end up seeing an error message rather than
the intended image. As a message board moderator, I've
noticed that the most popular avatar among most posters
is a tiny white square with a tiny red "x" in the center.
After the usual self-righteous teasing on my part, I'll
explain the same process I'm about to describe here:

Step One: Using Internet Explorer (or whatever web browser
you use), open up whatever image it was that you wanted
to store online.

Step Two: Click on "File", then "Save As". Select an easy
to remember location to save your file, like Desktop. On
the bottom of that window, you'll see two options: the one
on the top is for altering the file name, and the one below
it is for choosing a file format. Just disregard that last
one: we can force a format upon a file simply by typing
the file extension after the filename. (Note: If this
doesn't work for some reason, just select "All Files" and
proceed with my instructions.) For the image's file name,
type in "example.txt", then click "Save". If you look at
your Desktop now, you should see the example.txt file,
complete with a .txt file icon. If you try to open the
file by double-clicking on it, you'll just get a bunch
of nonsense hex code - don't worry about that. Just leave
the file alone and move on to Step #3.

Step Three: Assuming you've already got an account at a
free webspace provider, go to that site and log into your
account. Go to your file manager, and upload the .txt
file from your desktop.

Step Four: Sit back and drink a cup of coffee, then type
the address of your newly uploaded .txt file into the
address bar of your web browser. Be careful not to spill
your coffee all over when you excitedly notice that you're
viewing your image in all it's glory - even though it's
technically a .txt file.

Step Five: Go to your favorite message board, and create
a post with your new image embedded. The formatting codes
differ from board to board, but your post should probably
be something like this:

[IMG]http://geoshitties.com/me/example.txt[/IMG]

Now, you might be left wondering: 1) Why would the .txt
file show up as an image, 2) Why doesn't it get picked
up by the hotlinking filters, and 3) "Why the hell didn't
I think of that?!?"

The reason for the image showing up properly is because
by saving your image as a .txt file, the image's hex
remains completely unformated, and can be converted back
to an image format later on without damaging the file at
all. When you open that .txt file using your web browser,
the browser software identifies the hex as being an image
file, and will automatically convert it into a viewable
form. (This is the same reason that your web browser will
display a web page in HTML format, rather than just
opening up the source code in a raw text format.)

And since webspace providers are only really worried about
people hotlinking to image files - since it eats up your
bandwidth quickly; they could care less about someone
linking to a measly little .txt file. So far, I've yet to
find a free provider that wouldn't let you hotlink to a
.txt format image file, not even geocities or angelfire.


Problem Two - Those Pesky Ads:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It's almost impossible these days to find a free webhost
that provides a half-decent amount of storage space,
without littering your website with pop-ups and banner
ads. The webspace provider will definately force ads upon
any HTML files you store on your account, but they usually
won't force ads on regular .txt files. Why not? Because
in order to include an ad in one of your files, they have
to alter the format to HTML and include the link to the
ad in the source code. This creates an obvious problem,
since converting a .txt file to a .html file will really
mess up the formatting, and the text won't show up properly.
You'll already know this if you've ever tried including some
of your mad ASCII art in one of your site's pages.

I'm sure by now most of you have already figured out what
I'm getting to, but I'll explain it anyways...

Write the source for your webpage as per usual, but instead
of saving it as an HTML file, save it in .txt format. Upload
it to your website's account, and reopen it using your
browser. As you'll see, your page is now completely ad-free,
but it diplays as a proper HTML file. This works for the
same reason the image trick works - the source remains intact,
and your browser displays it in all it's glory. The only real
problem with this is that you can't display images on your
webpage... However, if your website is an H/P site, you most
likely have no real need to be embedding images into your
website anyways, unless it's to show off your wikkid logo
on your index page. If it's that important, then just get
off j00r lazy ass and code yourself an ASCII logo. Besides,
that'll just make you look more 1337. If you really need to
use an image for something, there's no reason why you can't
just link to the file using the "A HREF" tag.


Problem Three - Your Awkward Domain Name:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Now that you have a great new website, you might want to
get yourself a new domain name. There are two reasons for
this: First, using http://geoshitties.com/me/index.txt
as your website address will mean that nobody will ever
bother remembering the address. Secondly, and more import-
antly, when you type in a website address (i.e. 2600.com),
your browser will by default search for the index.html page
at that domain. And since we're using text files, you'll
just get a 404 message if you type in http://freepage.com/me

To solve this, just get yourself a new domain name, and
redirect everything from there to your index.txt page at
the free webhost. From that point onward, you can just give
your new domain name to people, and your page will launch
from the index.txt page.

But what if you don't want to pay for a .com address???
Worry not, there are actually a few domains out there
that will let you register a domain name of your choice
for free. For example, my page can be reached at
http://AxionTel.tk ...To register a .tk domain for free,
just go to http://dot.tk and fill out the required fields.

Note: If it turns out that the redirect doesn't work for
you, your webhost is probably a nazi & won't allow you to
hotlink to text files. Don't worry - there are oodles of
webspace providers out there that will let you hotlink
to .txt files; as of the date this article was written,
Geocities was just fine with it.


Conclusion:
~~~~~~~~~~
I don't think this would technically violate the Terms
of Service at your webspace provider, since none of
these providers would have thought of these exploits
yet. But just to be on the safe side, you might want
to create a fake index.html page just so that your
account doesn't get flagged. Aside from that, you should
be able to have an ad-free hotlink-able webpage for
months or years to come. Enjoy!

01.31.03