This is what routers are for. My router (a cheap fanless box with several network ports running linux) is the only thing on my network that knows there's a VPN. I can selectively route whatever I want through it, including having a separate SSID/VLAN from which everything is routed through the VPN. It's wireguard based so there's no "installing a VPN", just an interface/network configured in systemd-networkd (once, on the router).

Edit: Routing by domain name could be tricky, though. I haven't had a need for that, and a proxy with local DNS override (as in the article) might needed if it came to that. I'd still do it on the router, though.

From the last couple of weeks of researching some stuff, it makes perfect sense - I keep stumbling across blogs and documentation that uses Imgur, and it's really quite annoying that I can't see the screenshot or image that is being referenced. It hasn't /quite/ hit the point to put something in place, but this is super helpful for the final straw - when it comes!

Reddit is worse… you can’t even view someone’s profile if they’ve ever submitted a post labeled NSFW.

Instructions using the unifi mobile app as it’s what I have to hand:

1) download wireguard conf file from vpn provider. On mobile app settings -> vpn client -> add new -> wireguard. Upload the file and save it

2) settings -> policy engine -> policy based routes. New. Select what to route -> specific traffic. Source = all devices. destination = domain name. Here add any domains you like. Interface = add the vpn you added in step 1

{"data":{"error":"Imgur is temporarily over capacity. Please try again later."},"success":false,"status":403}

Is there a way to install a VPN such that requests to/from certain domains (e.g. imgur.com) are routed via the VPN and the rest of your traffic is via non-VPN?

This would solve the problem of constantly having to dis/re connect VPN, and do it in an automatic fashion (i.e. without the manual steps of first recognising there's an unavailable asset on the page, opening VPN app, switching it on etc).

Such a configuration would also be very useful in other situations, e.g:

- using social media in countries that require age-verification

- using apps that geoblock (e.g. spotify blocks my subscription every few days because it detects a change in country, but what it's really detecting is simply whether or not my VPN happens to be on/off)

- accessing sites which are blocked (e.g. Thailand blocks common UK news sites which have said unflattering things about Thai royalty).

You don't have to. You create a container which runs openvpn to connect to your vpn provider, and also hosts an ssh daemon. The ssh daemon receives incoming SOCKS5 connections from a firefox portable browser, which has been configured to use the proxy (your Docker openvpn-container) for browsing and DNS resolution, and pipes it through the VPN tunnel.

So you have that one browser just to surf imgur. if that's your thing. And you could also use Firefox on Android (maybe also iOS) with those proxy settings (a secondary Firefox browser, like the beta version).

So you get very high control about what you are using the VPN for, you don't just pipe your entire OS's network traffic through the VPN.

To anyone that wants to follow this article, it's more general guidance than an actual tutorial, there's a lot of holes to figure out.

It also doesn't work when directly accessing imgur, even if you add rules for the domain and the other subdomains they use, which is annoying.

Also, Imgur blocks many VPN IPs. I use Mullvad and I have not yet found a single Mullvad IP that can access Imgur.

I've thought about doing something similar as well! It drives me nuts this ban, everywhere I look I see these blocked images. I thought about making a chrome extension that proxies.

Also browsing Minecraft mods/shaders was my motivation ha.

From Italy (no VPN) I've been getting «{"data":{"error":"Imgur is temporarily over capacity. Please try again later."},"success":false,"status":403}» for any imgur url for maybe an year

Such a clear giveaway that this was written by an AI

The route rule would route out a VPN instead of the main route.

If the domain name resolves to many IPs you can keep an address list up to date using a simple script.

Unless you vpn back to your house, but then again, now you are using double vpn!

Install the Wireguard packages, create a connection to your VPN of choice in a nearby country (I chose Sweden). Then I used the "vpn-policy-routing" package to route Imgur IPs (199.232.196.193 199.232.192.193) through the VPN.

Works for websites that keep nagging you for age verification too.

But seriously, it's been more emotional than I'd expected to get my cat memes back.

This is true, and I learned to hate every bit of this fact. It taught me to despise hotlinking with passion.

All of those links are now down the train, and you have to pray that someone not only backed up the specific image you're looking for, but that they did so in a discoverable way.

Seems the author forgot one step.