Home of Devon Schreiner and Skewed Motion Media

Hotlinking Is Bad

Hi kids! Today’s blog post topic is Hotlinking! You all know what hotlinking is don’t you? You don’t? Well I’ll tell you! Thanks to our friends over at Answers.com, we know hotlinking is:

A connection between two files that automatically updates one whenever the other is updated.

Good, so now we know that it is two files that are both updated when the first, original is updated. Now why would we have to talk about hotlinking you may ask? Well it is very serious business. Whether the original file is yours or not, it is always a bad decision.

This is a picture of a puppy. It was not hotlinked.

Scenario One: The original file, lets say a picture, is up on your personal website. It’s a nice picture of you and your puppy. Awwww, you’re so cute! You have it as your bio picture and you think that it would be a perfect picture to submit to a website like PrettyPuppyPals.com. It may be good until you just give them the link to your picture and caption it, “Look at my cute puppy!”.

This is bad because when you change that picture on your personal website to a picture of you and your self-conscious girlfriend, it updates on Pretty Puppy Pals too. Then your girlfriend will find a picture of you and her with a caption from you, calling her your dog. This scenario never ends well. Do not hotlink your own pictures.

Scenario Two: You go to Google and type in “Cute Baby Puppy” and find the cutest picture of a puppy you have ever seen. You decide to copy the link and put it up on your personal website and write about how cute it is. All is well until the person you hotlinked the picture from finds out and decides to change the picture. “Isn’t that large male reproductive organ cute?!” your blog will read. Your friends and family will then proceed to mock you. Do not hotlink other people’s pictures.

If you are looking for a picture for your site or blog, there are many free pictures search engines out there. Use one. Some of my favorite are AcoBox.com, FreeFoto.com, and FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

Where do you get royalty free pictures? Did you find this information helpful? Let me know in the comments or @DevonSchreiner or @Tech_Blender or on our Facebook Page.

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