Don't Hotlink: Use ImgRed.com

Hotlinking is one of webmasters' pet peeves because it uses precious bandwidth, and is often done without the consent of the content's owner. There isn't much that can be done about the consent part, but bandwidth theft can be prevented.

ImgRed stands for Image Redirection, and what it does is copy the image directly, and takes the burden off the website hosting the image. It copies the image ONCE, and after that, there won't be any more requests from the original image URL.

How to use it: Prepend the URL of the image you want to use like this:

http://imgred.com/http://www.website.com/image.jpg

You can also display thumbnails by prepending the URL like this:

http://imgred.com/tn/http://www.website.com/image.jpg

Of course, http://www.website.com/image.jpg is a hypothetical URL. This is what you replace.

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Tags: Blogging, Hosting, Tips, Website