Don't hotlink, it steals bandwidth.

First of all, the problem with hotlinking is that the people doing it are generally not aware that they're doing it and don't know what it is. If they saw the term "hotlinking" they wouldn't think twice about it.

Are you one of those people? If so, I'm going to break this into very simple terms.

Bandwidth is the amount of web traffic that a site is allowed. Each time you visit a site, you use bandwidth. And that's great - websites are there because they want visitors.

Bandwidth is purchased by websites, therefore, sites are alotted a certain amount of bandwidth. If they go over that amount, the site could crash (be unavailable -- blank screen).

Hotlinking is when you copy a picture from another website and paste it into your own site, your online posts, or send it in an email. The picture is hosted (stored) on a site that does not belong to you. If you were to right-click an image, click Properties, then look at the location you can tell if it's hotlinked.

If you're on www.mommyhaven.com and the picture location says http://www.mommyhaven.com/ then it's NOT hotlinked.

If you're on http://www.mommyhaven.com/ and the picture location reads http://www.msn.com/ then the photo IS hotlinked.

Why is this a problem? Well, each time that picture is viewed it uses bandwidth and costs these sites money. Small sites have crashed because of this. Imagine copying a funny picture into an email, then sending it to 10 people, then they forward it to 10 people, and so on...and so on....

Solution? Make sure the image isn't protected by copyright first. That's the ethical thing to do. Then, right click image, save it to your PC, open an account with http://www.villagephotos.com/ or http://www.photobucket.com/ and upload it there. These are sites that allow you to hotlink. That's their gig...so...

Don't hotlink, it steals bandwidth.