www.streamcatcher.com Common Uses of StreamCatcher

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Common Uses of StreamCatcher

Some common reasons for using Streamcatcher are:

to be able to use short, simple URLs as abbreviations – giving a more professional web site presentation and facilitating easier advertising and daily use;
to treat web robot requests differently from other requests and thereby (a) gain more control over the content put into search engines and (b) reduce bandwidth costs;
to view a real-time log of incoming HTTP requests for all sites or one site.
to enable temporary or permanent redirection of any disabled or retired URL;
to disguise or protect the real functionality of specific URLs;
to prevent access to copywritten images, videos, photographs except within a designed domain (i.e. block usage by third parties). This can be done with a referer rule.
to identify all user agents (including web robots) hitting a WebSite;
to see a full analysis of HTTP request content during the development of web applications;
to reduce bandwidth and CPU cycles wasted by code red attacks.
to rewrite host headers for a Microsoft Content Management System ("MSCMS") authoring server.
to bounce traffic coming in on http to the corresponding URL on https
to rename a web site (change its address) (see how-to guide)
to support primary hosting of a www domain on Amazon S3 by remapping requests for the raw domain name (without the www prefix), avoiding to dead links and 404 errors. This is a real example. The domain ideactionmedia.com elected to move their static www web site to Amazon S3 hosting for better reliability and speed at a lower price. Yet they had accumulated a fair number of links and bookmarks to their raw domain name, for example, http://ideactionmedia.com/IdeactionMedia2/pages/retouchinghome.html. Using StreamCatcher , they were able to remap ALL old links from the raw domain to the www subdomain with one configuration rule. The %t in the remapping rule below means "tail" and causes everything to be pushed onto the www subdomain.
Master Config
```
[ideactionmedia.DomainsAndIP#sToFilter]
1=ideactionmedia.com
```
Web Site Config
```
[ideactionmedia.StaticURLsToReMapWithinDomain]
SCSeparator===>
/*==>http://www.ideactionmedia.com/%t
```
Note that by adding domain names to the list in the Master Config, you can (if you want) push many other domain names onto the same Amazon S3 bucket, such as .org, .net, or .biz variations of your common name. This is a service that ISPs and web hosting companies can easily offer to their customers - if they have a Windows server with StreamCatcher installed.

Remember: one StreamCatcher license supports UNLIMITED web sites on the server.