Hotlinking & Bandwidth

"Don't be a bandwidth thief"

The web site owner is charged for the amount of bandwidth used, per month. You can also think of bandwidth similar to the electricity your refrigerator takes to run. When someone links directly to an image on someone else's server instead of copying it to their own computer and then uploading it to their own server, it is similar to your neighbor running a cord over to your outlet to run his own refrigerator. While it is convenient for him, it is the person that has the plug in that has to pay for the extra usage.

There are many servers that set a limit to the amount of bandwidth a site may use each month and after that limit is reached, a site may be closed and the webmaster sent a large bill that must be paid before they can open their site again. Some artists can not afford this and may be forced to closed permanently. If you really admire the artist's who's work you are using help them keep their sites open by not stealing their bandwidth.

There are some very simple steps that you can take to unsure that you are not stealing someone else's bandwidth.

Always copy the images you want to use to your own computer, and them upload them to the directory on your own site.

To copy an image using a PC. Hold your mouse over the image you want to copy and click the right mouse button. When the drop down menu appears select "Save As" and you will be given another menu so you can select the file name and location of where you want to save the image. On A Mac, hold down the right mousebutton and follow a similar route. WebTv users can upload images to their pagebuilder using websisscors

Make sure that the image is being loaded from your own directory instead of the site where you original got it. If the image you want to load is in the same directory as the page you want to display it on.

the HTML code is simply:
<IMG SRC="the path, name and extension of the image">

Example: <IMG SRC="jazzman.gif">

Note your codes should never look like this:
<IMG SRC="http://www.Someone_Elses_Server.com/Image.gif">

Besides the reasons given above, and that of common courtesy and honesty, there are several other reasons why it is not a good idea to link directly to someone else's images. The most important is the fact that your pages will load faster if the images being used on those pages are also being called from your own site. The second is that you will be assured that the images are always available to your pages. Many artists including myself change their sites often and even remove images on occasion. If you link directly to one of their images, you could be faced with the following.

OH NO!!! A broken image!!!

Even worse than the broken image, is the surprise that some webmasters gives to those found stealing their bandwidth. Some webmasters replace the images being stolen with, ones that leave very little doubt that the site stealing bandwidth is a thief.

For an Example: Click Here

I hope this has helped you understand a little bit more about bandwidth and the importance of uploading the images you use to your own server.

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