URL Forwarding

[Hightower]

We block YouTube for students in school here, but we want to set it up so that when a pupil (and a pupil only) enters www . youtube . com it takes them to our fliggo site instead.

Is this possible? All pupil go through a level of filtering that no other users go through, so would this be the best place to do it? This filtering box is uses squid.

[RabbieBurns]

you just need to create a dns entry in your dns server that resolves YouTube - Broadcast Yourself. to the IP of the website you want them to go to instead I thnk

[RabbieBurns]

actually scratch that, thatll do it for everyone.

[vikpaw]

Can't you use a hosts file on the student machines? Or apply similar setting via policy.

[RabbieBurns]

Can't you use a hosts file on the student machines? Or apply similar setting via policy.

thats an idea.. logon script to set the hosts file.. log off script to reset it back. Then maybe a machine startup script to reset it just in case they turn it off without logging off.

[Hightower]

thats an idea.. logon script to set the hosts file.. log off script to reset it back. Then maybe a machine startup script to reset it just in case they turn it off without logging off.

I'm not too bothered about it if it's going to mean scripts all over the place. The kids will just have to learn that fliggo is the place to find educational videos, and staff will have to remember to tell them.

[tom_newton]

What web filtering are you using? That's the place to do this - probably has auth (so you can tell who's who) and can rewrite at URL level.

[vikpaw]

@rabbie... - prob too much effort to keep changing i was thinking if there are dedicated student machines that's quick and easy.
@all - Tom has the best idea, do it via filtering using maybe, ... um er Smoothwall..
@all - have you heard of or tried TrueTube ? saw it at BETT last year. safe vetted, for schools etc.

[Hightower]

@Vikpaw: We use something called fliggo - it allows staff to find videos on youtube and then send them to our own version of youtube, which is completely managed. That way we can ensure that kids only see appropriate content. It also allows us to organise the content into subject categories etc.

@Tom: I was thinking this is the most obvious. We are using a Ubuntu box with Squid installed. I stumbled across something called Squirm which can apparantly do this on a Squid box. Just got to find a good Ubuntu install guide.

[tom_newton]

@Hightower: would have thought squid could do this all by itself? Not user if it can do it "per group" though.

[Iain]

You should be able to achieve this with squid alone... take a look at the url_rewrite_program and url_rewrite_access directives

squid : url_rewrite_program configuration directive
squid : url_rewrite_access configuration directive

You'll need a redirector script though (A simple perl script will do)... there's plenty of examples about on the web....

I've used this in the past to redirect request from non favourable search engines to google.

Some more info in this thread.... Squid Webpage redirect

Iain.

[ind1ekid]

You can get squid to serve up flippo instead of youtube very easily using a single deny_info line.

deny_info http://yourflippourl youtube_acl

Basically, when squid denys the user access based on the acl you specify (create one solely for youtube) in the deny_info line it redirects them to the url given. Really good for custom error pages ive found

Squid Deny info