How to Kill, Block, Redirect, and/or Stop the Diggbar

Digg recently created the "DiggBar," an html toolbar that frames each subsequent website click in such a way that Digg benefits from the traffic. While the bar remains on a user's screen, they loose the ability to truly bookmark a site or view the real URL. Instead, all navigation is manipulated to benefit digg and their advertisers. Thankfully there are now several methods to stop Digg from taking advantage of your website.

The first option is to simply block traffic from Digg. As Daring Fireball points out at the original source (link below in the resources), the large amount of traffic Digg sends to sites is the worst kinda - "mindless, borderline illiterates. Good riddance, really." That debate is out of the scope of this article, but if you'd like to join in protest add this PHP code to the top of your page, add this between some php brackets:

if (preg_match('#http://digg.com/\w{1,8}/*(\?.*)?$#',

$_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER']) ) {

echo "Diggbar totally killed!";

exit; }

The second option is to kill the bar on your site. To do this, you're going to need to copy and paste some javascript to the top of your page. Here's the

if (top !== self && document.referrer.match(/digg\.com\/\w{1,8}/)) {

top.location.replace(self.location.href);

}

This will load your page REMOVING the Diggbar in the process. If you feel the potential Digg traffic is of benefit to you but you'd like to get rid of that bar, this is the method for you.

Don't forget: Add the Diggbar Fixed icon to your site to make your voice heard! A better solution than either above is to get Digg to change its policies. Let them know that you've taken an active step to stop their Diggbar. You can get the Diggbar Fixed icon at:

http://flickr.com/photos/1how/3432422079/

It's free to use and manipulate under creative commons as long as you link back here to let people know what's up.

Additional Tips

• Throw that "Diggbar Fixed" icon on your site! This is a revolution we're trying to start here, people.