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August 10, 2005

Never, ever Hotlink!

If you want to feature a photo that is on someone else's blog or website, you should copy that photo to your own server or get an account at one of those photo-hosting servers.

Last night, this website: http://thisismycomputerblog.blogspot.com/ by something named Eggagog got an Instalanche from Ann Althouse (who does not appreciate the fact that Glenn links to Carnivals, by the way)

Anyway, back to the above-mentioned blog. It's goofy and cute, and there are a ton of pictures there. Because I like to have pictures on my blog, I checked the properties on several of them to see where Eggagog is hosting his/her pictures. He/she is not hosting them. They are all hot-linked. That means that people viewing the pictures on the Eggagog blog are using the bandwidth of people who are not Eggagog and probably don't know where all their bandwidth is going to - especially after an Instalanche. The bandwidth they pay for is essentially being stolen by the blog. And that can get very expensive. John has had this problem to the point where he is thinking about not publishing as many pictures.

If you want a picture on your blog, please remember that you should host that picture yourself. Fototime and Exposure Manager are two good examples of hosting companies that charge reasonable prices.

Posted by Beth at August 10, 2005 05:43 AM