What is Direct-Linking?

Many (and most) people who offer free graphics on their site ask you to not direct-link. But what exactly is direct-linking?

Put in short, to direct-link means to steal a webmaster's space by loading an image onto your page directly off their site. What does that mean? When you put the image on your site, if you direct-link it, the graphic's original URL is in the html. (For instance, if you direct-linked ¡Adriennewolter.com!, your html would look like this:

<img scr="http://www.adriennewolter.com/folder/imagename.gif>

This isn't good because, if the site's owner pays for their space and bandwidth, they are not only paying for themselves, but they are also paying for you. So, direct-linking (or hot-linking as it is called by some) is stealing others' traffic capacity (that's bandwidth) and money. And even if they don't pay for their space, their site can be shut down because it generates too much traffic. If you like their images, there's a good likelihood that you wouldn't want them shutting down, so try to prevent it happening.

But if you don't care about those poor people who you are taking advantage of, there are other bad things about direct-linking. For one, many sites have scripts that will change your image into a link to them. Or, even worse, since the webmaster has control over the image you hot-linked, they can change it to something quite nasty. I don't think your visitors would come back if they saw a huge, nasty picture in place of an enter graphic or something of that nature. It's not really that enticing to keep looking at a site with direct-linked images.

Another problem is the fact that people who direct-link are looked at as the scum of the internet community. You can make a whole lot of enemies through direct-linking. And, since your computer keeps track of everything you do and some people have easy access, they can fairly easily make your online life pretty, well, dangerous.

So, you know, if you want to take the chance or if you're too lazy to save an image to your own space, go ahead. Don't complain to the webmaster of the site you're direct-linking if you get a graphic of the finger in place of your cute little blinkie or bunny rabbit or what have you.

.~*~.

Want to spread the word? Save this button (or make your own! Donate?), put it on your site, and link it to http://www.adriennewolter.com/you/directlinkinginfo.htm !