Direct Linking

I've noticed that a lot of people have been hotlinking the images on my site's server and displaying them on forums, blogs, as avatars, etc.... Many people are unaware that when you direct link, it eats up $bandwidth$ from the site you're linking from and the site owners are essentially paying to display their images on these other sites.

What is Direct linking?
Direct linking (aka hot linking) is when a person links directly to an image on another persons' web server and uses their bandwidth to display the image on another site. ie: simply inserting the URL of the object's current location. The end result is that the actual image gets displayed/embedded within a forum thread, a forum avatar, or within a blog entry, etc...

What should I do then?
If you wish to use the images on my site, PLEASE save the images to your own computer and upload the image to your own server and link to it from there. There are many free image hosting sites that you can join, I recommend Photobucket.

Can I link to a photo on your site in a text link?
Yes! You can post a text link to the image for people to click on to view. Just copy the page URL from the browser's address bar. I have no problem with this.

What is Bandwidth?
Bandwidth is basically data transferred from one computer to the next. When you loaded this page, it used some bandwidth by sending the data from my server to your computer. It's sort of like electricity - when you turn on a light, it uses electricity. When you view a web page or image, or access any other file on the internet, it uses bandwidth. Webhosting companies often charge websites according to their bandwidth usage.

An Analogy of What Bandwidth Theft Is
If you're still unsure of what this is all about, think of it this way. It's kind of like your neighbour running an extension cord to your electric outlet to run his appliances w/o your knowledge and you getting stuck with the bill at the end of the month.

Thanks for your co-operation in this matter. If you have any questions, feel free to email me.

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