The metafilter.org backdoor has been closed

February 6, 2006 7:17 PM

Once upon a time not so long ago, I could type in the FQDN http://www.metafilter.org and actually resolve that address and browse Metafilter threads from my office. Now, when I try to use that address, it automatically reverts to http://www.metafilter.com and that address is blocked by my company's "Smartfilter" as "chat/forums". I can't read threads at work anymore and I'm pretty sad about that.
posted by PuppyCat to MetaFilter-related at 7:17 PM (9 comments total)

I noticed that google was indexing metafilter.org and kind of mucking up results.

I could turn it off if you really need it.
posted by mathowie at 7:41 PM on February 6, 2006

If you want, I can grant you access to a PHP-based proxy that I run on a linux machine at home.
posted by ori at 7:58 PM on February 6, 2006

If they are blocking www.metafilter.com but not *.metafilter.com you could get the threads via RSS (xml.metafilter.com) and then read the thread you want by substituting say:

http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/48942 with

http://xyz.metafilter.com/mefi/48942

Kind of manual but it should work. (someone check me on this)
posted by vacapinta at 8:06 PM on February 6, 2006

The best thing would be to setup a proxy somewhere.

Actualy, if you bought a cheap hosting solution (like dreamhost) and setup a PHP based proxy. That way, you could browse any website you wanted, and no filter would ever be able to stop you, or even learn about your proxy, since you would be the only one to use it.
posted by delmoi at 9:08 PM on February 6, 2006

matt, if you have two domain names that return the same content but you don't want one of them spidered, you can always do something like this (where robots-dontspiderme.txt is a robots.txt variant disallowing all spiders):

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} .*metafilter.org$
RewriteRule ^/robots.txt /robots-dontspiderme.txt [L]
posted by George_Spiggott at 9:15 PM on February 6, 2006

Oh, and if you have a site with multiple domain aliases and you only want one of them spidered, change the condition to use the (mod_rewrite specific) negation modifier, and match against the one you do want spidered:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !*.metafilter.com$
posted by George_Spiggott at 9:29 PM on February 6, 2006

Argh. Reverse the "*." to read ".*"
posted by George_Spiggott at 9:30 PM on February 6, 2006

Google's backdoor proxy doesn't work for you? - enter a blocked URL in the form

http://translate.google.com/translate_c?hl=en&u=www.metafilter.com (to get to metafilter, for example.)

Every link on the resulting page will also be proxified.
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 4:02 AM on February 7, 2006

The Google backdoor proxy doesn't work at all for me, because whatever trumpep-up smartfilter proxy garbage my award-winning IT folks have installed can't process the information. I get a message back like this:

You cannot access the following Web address:
http://64.233.179.104/translate_c?hl=en&u=http://www.metafilter.com/

The site you requested is blocked because its IP address is uncategorized.

Incidentally, you recieve the same message when you try to access any url that hasn't been "properly identified and categorized".

Fun and frolic.
posted by PuppyCat at 6:48 PM on February 7, 2006