Revision as of 10:35, 5 November 2005

We are having referer difficulties

Referer information is required to navigate Expreso Beans. You may have directly or indirectly turned off the sending of the referer information in your browser.

What is a referer?

In web terms, this the web address that has directed the browser to a given web page. For example, if you hit this site from a Google search, then the referer might be http://www.google.com/.... Another example, is when you hit a web page that contains images, the refer for those images will be that very web page.

What do we use it for?

We use the referer for two things. First we use it to navigate the user experience. When you login, we will return you to the page you were at before the login, or when you add an item to a collection, we will return you to the page you were at. We know this because of the referer information. Secondly, we use it to protect our images from remote linking. We only show images when the referer is on our site. This saves bandwidth and ultimately helps keep the site preforming well for everyone.

How to fix what is broken?

1. In Firefox, enter "about:config" in the address bar and press enter.
2. double click on network.http.sendRefererHeader
3. change the value to 2 (which is the default)
4. double click on network.http.sendSecureXSiteReferer
5. change the value to true (which is the default)