Hot Linking To Images.......what is it?

What problems can you run into if you hot link to images.

Hot linking is when you link something on your website to a resource on another web site.

Most sites consider hot linking to images paramount to theft. Theft of bandwidth.

Even if you have permission to link to images on another server it is a good idea to host your own images on a web host like my easy pics.

I inadvertently caused some auctions to go down twhen someone I had helped with a page was still using an image on my web server.
I use the doua logo on my templates and auctions. I self host the image on my web host.

The DOUA logo image looks great and helps people know about the DOUA organization. (that is how i first found it) But if everyone were to put it in their me page and auctions, and did not place the image on their image host it would cause a nightmare when the web host bill for overage on bandwidth came in.

And what else could very well happen is that whomever is taking care of the site could delete the image off the server and all of sudden your pages won't display right anymore.

If you are using a background image or have your auction image on someone elses web host it can and will disappear from your page.

Or even worse.

I was attempting to password protect a folder that contains templates. I then intended to make the password available to all members of DOUA.

I did not realize that the doua image in that auction was still hot linked to me. When I did that, these auctions were not available to anyone visiting the Ebay page that the auction was on.

This was a mini disaster as all of a sudden every auction was locked out. When a visitor came to the page it asked for a name and password. Not what you want with potential customers come knocking. You can't sell nothing with the store locked up.