explanation to what hotlinking is - and why it's bad.

Sawell · 27 Oct 2009 at 12:29

krooton said:
I have a monthly transfer for 2000GB. I rarely break 80GB. This is for $6 a month.

Yeah, overselling, and is done by 90% of hosting companies. The reality is 2000GB a month costs a lot more to maintain in a DC but people don't meet it. They'll have 4,000 other accounts like you that only use 80GB or less a month, thus overselling is born.

OCUK gets thousands of views a minute, if you happened to be a webmaster with a shared hosting account on a small site and you stuck up a 500kb picture you thought was hilarious and it got posted on here you'd soon find your bandwidth stacking up. And then the server also has to deal with the image requests, which means you might go over your alotted CPU/Memory allowance (small print), which means you might go slow or crash.

Hotlinking on a site that's not designed for it can have big implications if it's being hotlinked somewhere with substantial traffic. It's a bit like sticking your foot out on a motorway.

deadite66 · 27 Oct 2009 at 12:33

someone hotlinked from me once, using an animated gif i had, found her page using the apache logs then switched the gif over to an unsavory picture reading the comments on her page humoured me greatly.

Maccy · 27 Oct 2009 at 12:37

And Mac users can use Skitch - a very simple and easy image grabbing program that requires very little effort.

Feek · 27 Oct 2009 at 12:43

Maccy said:
And Mac users can use Skitch - a very simple and easy image grabbing program that requires very little effort.

I use it all the time, gives lovely drop shadows

blix · 27 Oct 2009 at 12:43

What I lol at is the number of people who apparently go round the forum right-clicking on every image and checking the URL for thrills. Not talking about mods.

kaiowas · 27 Oct 2009 at 12:43

My only issue with this thread is that it's encouraging the use of imageshack. It's crap and it's slow. Pages with several images hosted there take an absolute age to download. If you're not interested in the images and are just trying to read the text you also get the annoyance of your browser shifting everything every now and again as another image finally downloads.

Dark_Angel · 27 Oct 2009 at 12:45

blix said:
What I lol at is the number of people who apparently go round the forum right-clicking on every image and checking the URL for thrills. Not talking about mods.

Perhaps because we know moderators can't do everything and therefore we need to help them out?

I admit I probably check more than what's "normal" but if I am bored and waiting for something to download / load / whatever else gives me something to do.

Janesy B · 27 Oct 2009 at 12:46

blix said:
What I lol at is the number of people who apparently go round the forum right-clicking on every image and checking the URL for thrills. Not talking about mods.

The status car at the bottom tells you what sources the browser is downloading from.

Dark_Angel · 27 Oct 2009 at 12:46

kaiowas said:
My only issue with this thread is that it's encouraging the use of imageshack. It's crap and it's slow. Pages with several images hosted there take an absolute age to download. If you're not interested in the images and are just trying to read the text you also get the annoyance of your browser shifting everything every now and again as another image finally downloads.

If you have a few other suggestions please feel free, I will be more than happy to add them to my original post!

MonkeyNews · 27 Oct 2009 at 12:54

Yep, fully agree with this, its not hard to not hotlink.

Dj_Jestar · 27 Oct 2009 at 12:59

[TW]Fox;15184962 said:
If they don't want bandwidth 'stolen' (And it isn't 'stolen', thats completely the wrong term) then simple no hotlinking scripts are everywhere.

It is stealing. I've been 'victim' to having some of my homepage images hotlinked onto sites that are very busy, to the realm of 160GB+ a month of traffic from two of the images alone. I had to pay for that bandwidth, and my site was shutdown until I had done so. I didn't post them on the site generating that traffic, someone else did.

It can easily be likened to someone taking your car for a ride, without your permission, and now you have an extra 100,000 miles on the clock that you didn't want on there, and you must stump up the service bills.

Janesy B · 27 Oct 2009 at 13:07

Open Photobucket Account
Download Photobucket Uploader Add On for Firefox

Job Done.

Dark_Angel · 27 Oct 2009 at 13:08

Not if you're like me and using IE it isn't!

buy_my_cookies · 27 Oct 2009 at 13:11

thanks for this, i have always seen the "no hotlinking posts" but never known what it is. has stoped me from posting images.

V4NT0M · 27 Oct 2009 at 13:14

krooton said:
Own webspace 4TW!

My OCUK sig is number 1 on my table of files transferred.

41204 hits, 591MB in the month of October, hehe.

Hmmm... *checks mine*

lol 211,000 for october and ~4m altogether.

Janesy B · 27 Oct 2009 at 13:23

Dark_Angel said:
Not if you're like me and using IE it isn't!

Use a proper browser.

http://tutorials.photobucket.com/tutorial_7.html

Dark_Angel · 27 Oct 2009 at 13:24

I like Internet Explorer! Actually I like both, but on the W7 side I don't have it. On Vista I use the fox of fire.

Janesy B · 27 Oct 2009 at 13:25

I use FF on Windows 7 x64. It's fine

Basher · 27 Oct 2009 at 13:30

Dark_Angel said:
I admit I probably check more than what's "normal" but if I am bored and waiting for something to download / load / whatever else gives me something to do.

You should probably get out more.

Agree only reason is the potential for nasty images. Bandwidth utilisation through this medium can easily be controlled if the host is that fussed.

R B Customs · 27 Oct 2009 at 13:42

Image shack has a toolbar / windows add on which lets you upload files from Pc with a right click (re-size too) and same from a browser with a right click. can also upload 'all' images on a browser too.

hotlinking bad!

imageshack / photobucket etc = down to preference.