We're having a discussion over in the Royalty Thread about photos, because one of our favourite threads was locked by Mac yesterday. Apparently, folks were hotlinking to pics, and it caused two problems.
1) It's a bandwidth hog, and Mac (and ultimately we) have to pay for the bandwidth we use. It also causes loading problems for anyone with less than the most expensive internet services, which is a lot of us.
2) Some sites don't like hotlinking (it uses their bandwidth, too), so in order to teach the hotlinker a lesson, they redirect the link to "naughty" pictures, or other inappropriate material, though some just link to a message that says, "No hotlinking allowed."
There is a way around it. You can, for absolutely no cost whatsoever, sign up for an account at Photobucket.com. Then when you see a pic you'd like to post, right click on the pic. Save the pic to your computer. Upload the pic from your computer to your photobucket account. When it appears in your photobucket album, you'll see a bunch of tags below it. Copy and paste the [ img ] tag, and the photo will appear in glorious colour (unless it's black and white) in your post.
Another way to do it, especially for material that's copyrighted, is to post a link that will lead to the page the photo is on when clicked. That's also good for material that's NSFW.
But please, let's stop the hotlinking.
This has been a public service announcement, which Mac can sticky or delete at her whim. Thank you for your time.
1) It's a bandwidth hog, and Mac (and ultimately we) have to pay for the bandwidth we use. It also causes loading problems for anyone with less than the most expensive internet services, which is a lot of us.
2) Some sites don't like hotlinking (it uses their bandwidth, too), so in order to teach the hotlinker a lesson, they redirect the link to "naughty" pictures, or other inappropriate material, though some just link to a message that says, "No hotlinking allowed."
There is a way around it. You can, for absolutely no cost whatsoever, sign up for an account at Photobucket.com. Then when you see a pic you'd like to post, right click on the pic. Save the pic to your computer. Upload the pic from your computer to your photobucket account. When it appears in your photobucket album, you'll see a bunch of tags below it. Copy and paste the [ img ] tag, and the photo will appear in glorious colour (unless it's black and white) in your post.
Another way to do it, especially for material that's copyrighted, is to post a link that will lead to the page the photo is on when clicked. That's also good for material that's NSFW.
But please, let's stop the hotlinking.
This has been a public service announcement, which Mac can sticky or delete at her whim. Thank you for your time.
