Please fully read through this posting if you have ever been accused of hotlinking! It contains useful explainations and information about why your actions are considered so evil by other webmasters!

What is hotlinking? Stealing!! Hotlinking, or sometimes called direct linking, is the linking to of images located on someone's server (website) other than your own. Example: if your website is called www.mywebsite.com then all your images should begin with www.mywebsite.com/....ect. However if your images begin with www.theirwebsite.com/.....you are a stinky hotlinker & should be slapped many times!

Why is it a pain? I'm so glad you asked! It is a pain in the ass because many people pay monthly fees to have a website. YES some people pay actual hard earned cash to have a website! When you link to their images directly, you are using up their bandwidth (file transfer) every time someone views your website, even if all you have a little free site for which you pay nada. So in other words, you are quite literally stealing money from the other webmaster.

What is this "bandwidth" of which you speak? Ah ha grasshopper, bandwidth is the allowed amount of files that can be transferred around the great wide internet from a certain site. Most web-hosts will put a limit to the amount of bandwidth a certain site can use in a month. Go over that amount & bam the webmaster will either have to pay extra hosting fees or the site gets a pretty little sign that usually reads "this site has exceeded it's bandwidth, please try again next month".

So what, why do I care about that other webmaster? We've come to the sweet poetic justice part of the informational html page....you care, stinky little hotlinker, because by linking directly to someone else's image, they essentially control what shows up on your website. Many webmasters get down-right nasty about the images that show up on direct linker's sites.

Ha! How can you possibly catch everybody? Oh but indeed I can....when people visit your site, it calls the file from MY server, showing up in MY hit-logs. So there you are, a nice neat little link in my server log right to your site, I check every new site I find linking to any of my sites, & low & behold, if I find you hotlinking, I turn into a total bitch & make your life hell until you realize what you are doing is wrong.

Why do you put up so many images then, stupid? Besides being a glutton for punishment I guess, I put up images for people to enjoy. People are quite free to save most of them to their own computer then upload them to their own server. I love to see people enjoy my creations...just not at the expense of my checkbook.

Damn, I've been caught hotlinking! Now what? First off, don't pretend you didn't just get caught. You did, you screwed up, no biggie, just stop hotlinking, say you're sorry, and move along your merry way! What you don't want to do, my stinky little hotlinker - is throw a big dramatic hissy fit, bitch and moan, call the people who busted you names, TyPe Lk DIS Abot HOWz youZ WAZ fRaMed n SCHnIT...just have some maturity, and admit you made a mistake. Its simple, its easy, but most of all - it makes you look like an adult.

But I need images for my site! No problem, you want to put images on your site. There are many places that allow image storage. Photobucket for example. Simply right click on the image you like, choose "save as" from the menu, and then open yourself a Photobucket account and upload the images there. However, always make sure first that the image you are saving to put on your site is one that is OK to take from the website where you found it!! Some images are copyrighted, and their creators do not want them used elsewhere.

A Bit About Proper Credit Surely you've heard about giving credit where it's due? No, no, not a credit card, this sort of credit is different. This sort of credit is making sure to let people know where the images on your site came from. Many webmaster work very hard on those little image you like so much. Some of them are hours in the making! All these creators want is for you to say "hey, this person made this cool thing, check out their site!" Do not claim credit for someone else's work! You will always get caught in the end, and then you will look like a giant idiot.

So to sum things up, do not hotlink, it is rude, shows stupidity, & above all can possibly be illegal, get your site shut down, get you sued, & end up being...you guessed it...a giant pain in everyone's ass.

Busted! A gallery of Hotlinkers

This has been a public service announcement by a webmaster who has been direct linked too many times to count.

Layout - BCD | Artwork - Frank Cho
Updates - Wordpress