Sep 23 2008
When hotlinks aren’t so hot
Okay, time for an important lesson for new bloggers and one that can sometimes be painful to learn on your own. Today’s post is about a process known as hotlinking.
In particular we need to discuss the process of hotlinking to images on someone else’s server without their express consent. For starters, it is stealing and although it happens every day it is illegal to do so. Beyond that, such links can cause your page to load more slowly for the end users.
It was brought to my attention today that a new blogger used a hotlink for an image on their blog only to have their readers greeted by a pornographic image later. That’s a common practice for people who have their images used without permission, so you can see it is a big problem. On top of that, it costs the image owner money because you are using their server resources and they aren’t getting anything for it.
There’s a simple solution, so pay attention kids!
