Hotlinking is when somebody uses an image that isn’t theirs in another page by linking directly to the image url.
It’s a form of stealing. They don’t have the right to use that image, as it belongs to somebody else. But they are also “stealing bandwidth”. When an image loads, the domain that is hosting it pays for the bandwidth out of their bandwidth limit. If people are visiting your site and seeing your image when they look at your page, then it is worth it to you. But if somebody else puts your image on display elsewhere without telling you, and it loads a lot, you can end up having to pay a big premium or get shut down by your host for exceeding their bandwidth limits.
The only way to find this out is to look at your server records. If you see a lot of hits from some site you don’t have a link on, and the page you have loading is actually an image, you’ve probably found a hotlinker.
One girl found a hotlinker this way. Some meathead had found a full-size image on her site of two girls kissing and was using it as his avatar in an Irish soccer forum. Many forums will upload an image off the web and resize it. This one just resized the image using height and width tags. So the full image was loading for every forum post he wrote, for every viewer who looked at any page he had a post on.
I think a couple of us joined the forum and posted that he did not have the right to do this. He was pretty arrogant about it. And this guy was a moderator! So she changed the name of the photo on her server and replaced it with an advertisement. I sent an email to the admin, who sent me back an apology. I guess there was going to be an email going out to forum members on that.
So first, the image must be hosted on your server so you have control of image names. This won’t work with any other image hosting, as they generate unique image names that you can’t change.
Here’s an image somebody might be using as a background:
Upload a new image you have chosen specially for the thieves. Change the link on your own webpage and rename the original image to match it. Now change the name of the special image, and your chosen image will appear on the site where the hotlink appears.
Like this:
The fun part is that you can put anything you want in there. Somebody who right-clicked your image url to use it may very well not have used height and width tags on that image. So you could substitute a gigantic image for a small one.
Like this:
If the original image is a .gif rather than a .jpg image, you can substitute an animation, which can really get the attention of viewers.
Like this:
Here’s a link to a blog post where the writer got tired of people stealing his content. For him, the issue was not images, but text that other people were stealing. What he did was make a tiny clear .gif image and include it in the code. It did not show, so if somebody stole his text and didn’t realize they were getting an image, they might end up unwittingly hotlinking to it.
Most content thieves don’t do that, but eventually one did. It’s pretty funny when they do. All the author had to do was switch out the tiny, transparent image for one that got his message across.
If you catch someone like this and pull this switcheroo, make sure you take a screenshot so you can show everyone. And if you substitute an animated one, try to get a video screen capture.
Probably you’ve heard the acronym ‘FTP’. Unless you’ve had to use it, you probably don’t know much about it. As far as FTP goes, what you don’t know can suddenly become extremely inconvenient for you.
FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. It’s a way of moving files from one computer to another computer over the web. It is a lot faster than downloading them through HTTP, or Hyper Text Transfer Protocol, which you access through links on regular html webpages. If I installed an FTP server on my computer, I could set you up an account and give you a username and password. You could then open your FTP client, go to the FTP address of my computer, log in, and download files from any directories that I had given you access to. I could choose to allow you to upload files, too.
In review…
The FTP server is the remote computer that hosts files for transfer. The FTP client is the software you use to get those files.
FTP for downloading purchased content
This is what happens when you buy content. The files are so large that it would take too long to transfer them just by clicking a link on a webpage, so they may set you up an account and let you download them that way.
My favorite FTP client is a free one, FTP995. It’s really easy to set up and use. I used to use Ipswitch, which I paid for, but I like this one better.
Edit to add: I haven’t used this one in a while. Lately I have used Filezilla client and FireFTP Firefox plugin.
The content company will give you their FTP address, your username, and your password. You just type that info in at the top. Click Connect, and you will go there and login.
Files will appear on the right and left side of the window. The ones on the right side are the remote computer. The ones on the left are your own computer. You need to decide where you want to put the content before downloading it. The top listing on the left is just directories and folders. Double click on a directory to find a subdirectory. Right click on a directory to create a new directory. If you are new to this and don’t have a directory where you put your photos, I recommend going to My Pictures and creating a new Content directory there. If you have bought photos of more than one model, create a new subdirectory within that for each new model, and within that for each set. Double-click the folder at the top with two dots next to it (which represents the directory you are in) to move back up a level.
When you reach the place where you want to download to and are all set, right-click the file on the right you want to download and select ‘download’ from the menu. Then wait. When it’s done, it will appear in the location on the left.
I know it seems like a pain, but it would be a nightmare later to straighten out if you get everything mixed up.
They will have the files zipped when you download. If double-clicking on the file icon doesn’t open it, this company also has a free unzip utility.
Software995
FTP for creating and managing websites
I know a lot of people who realize the need for a website find the idea of constructing one and putting it online to be somewhere between daunting and downright scary. It looks like there are so many things that can go wrong that if you make the wrong mistake you could inadvertently start World War III or cause the end of civilization as we know it.
Many webhosts capitalize on newbie fear by providing sitebuilders and a variety ways of getting a page online without having to use ftp. Most of them are very limiting. You will never learn how to run a website properly while using a setup like that. But the worst part is that when you start needing more services, they charge outrageous prices for them. It rapidly adds up to far more than the cost of a real web host, and you may not even be able to take your site with you when you do make the move. You’ll have to create a new one.
It’s not rocket science. It’s not even hard after you’ve done it like once. It’s just a different way of thinking that you may not be accustomed to. So let’s look at FTP.
Again, you install the FTP client software. Your webhost has given you the FTP address you need, your FTP username and password. Fill it in and connect. Then all you have to do is right-click a file on the left to select the ‘Upload’ option to upload it to your domain on the right.
Call your first html page index.html or index.htm. Upload it and this is what will show when somebody types your domain name in. Call your other pages whatever you want to and link to them from your index page.
Images? Videos? Recordings? Create an ‘Images’, ‘Videos’, or ‘Recordings’ directory and upload to it.
You can even re-download something you accidentally deleted or forgot where you put it on your computer.
