wmrawls

Many of you like to post images on this site and others...heck I do it all the time. One thing you have to be careful of is a term known as hot linking. What this basically does is establish a constant link from the site you post on back to the original site that is hosting the image….most of the host sites get their panties in a wad over this because it uses up bandwidth and most are charged by their ISP for bandwidth. A nifty little site to use to get around this is http://imgred.com/

And you don't have to go through the trouble of downloading and reuploading the image.
This site actually re hosts the image and keeps the original on their board and your link stays good. See the real danger of hot linking from your point of view is if the image is changed on the host site but the url stays the same…lets say you come across a funny picture that is perfectly acceptable to be viewed by all family members but the host decides to put something up less desirable…well you don’t know its happened but your post is now being viewed by lots of other people and all of a sudden you’re a scum bag in their minds. Now I don’t have any connection with imgred at all but do use them a lot as I post on 4 other boards pretty frequently and admin on two of them….so this is free information and we all know that means you need to check it out for yourself.

Oh and why am I posting this....well sure I am a nice guy but on anotehr one of the boards I admin on we had a big mess when the images were changed as I described above and some pretty interesting images were starting to appear through one ladies posts.....

Graham2456

Informative post and very helpful for those of us (or only me) who muddle through.
If we use the "insert link" facility at the top of the posting box (where I am typing at the moment) is that a "hotlink"?

Rsaturn9

Its always a good Idea to remind the members about not HOTLINKING Images!!

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Pedah

:approve: Very well put WM, I was doing exactly that not understandig what "Hotlinked" meant. I thought hotlinked meant that the images I posted contained a link to another site. I got an account at a few sites to fix the prob and have found www.photobucket.com to be the fastest and best. Thanx for the timely reminder.:approve: :approve:

dgoldring

Good advice. I just signed up for photobucket. :)

Doug

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stevenator65

Very well said wmrawls!

Pedah

Originally Posted by dgoldring

Good advice. I just signed up for photobucket. :) Doug

Hey Doug recognise this, that is how fast Photobucket is

Graham2456

Nobody responded to my query in post #2. I am not exactly sure of what a "hotlink" is.

Rsaturn9

Originally Posted by Graham2456

Nobody responded to my query in post #2. I am not exactly sure of what a "hotlink" is.

Here is a link with the Definition of Hotlinking:approve:

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Graham2456

Originally Posted by rsaturn9

Here is a link with the Definition of Hotlinking:approve:

Thanks for that. So anytime we use the "insert link" facility in the posting box we are actually hotlinking.

Rsaturn9

Only when you Post a picture linked from someone elses site, You can however post links to others sites, just dont use someone elses site as a Image host!!

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dgoldring

Hey, Graham. I am a non-techie, so let me see if I can explain without using techie terms. :)

When you insert a link, you areactually telling your browser to travel to that link. So you are not using their bandwidth.

When you hotlink a picture, you are actually telling your browser to open a window to their site, through which you can see the picture without grabbing it. I actually did not understand this very well either unit recently. As was stated earlier, there are two problems with hotlinking to someone else's site:

1) it uses their bandwidth
2) you have no control over the image, which means it could be changed and, therefore, changed on your site as well.

Make sense??

Doug

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wmrawls

Sorry for not responding sooner but by now you have your answer and the best way to look at it is as DGOLDRING explained.
The best way of course is to downlaod and reload to your own image site and that wasy you control every aspect of the image. The site I posted is a nice "quick" way to spread the image to the sites you want to share it with.
Hope you have it down pat now.
Best Regards.

Graham2456

Many thanks to Doug and rsaturn9. I wasn,t trying to be thick but I think I was getting caught up between linking to another site (for information) and posting a picture from another site.
I am now about 99% clear on it which should be enough to prevent me doing the wrong thing.