What is hotlinking?

Simply put, hotlinking is the act of placing an asset onto your site by directly linking to said asset from someone elses site. While hotlinking is most commonly done to images it can also be done with other files, such as audio or video files.

Now, I'm sure you might not think there's anything wrong with this; after all, lots of people make their own materials for people to use on their own sites! Hotlinking, however, is not the way to use those materials.

Why is hotlinking wrong?

Hotlinking is an issue for quite a few reasons, varying in severity to just being a crummy thing to do, all the way to being illegal in some cases.

The main reason you shouldn't hotlink on your website it that, even when an asset is placed on your site, it uses up the bandwidth from the hosters website, which - if they own their own site - costs them money. When you hotlink, the image may load on your site but it still uses up server resources from the hosters side; if a popular website (or a bunch of websites) directly links to just one persons website, it can end up being a huge cost to the original poster.

In addition to this, it's also just plain unethical to do. Not all people on the internet post things for other people to use them; quite often, people make personal websites to show off their content rather than make it free for other people to use. In this case, not only are you using up bandwidth for them, you're also unethically using content you have no right to use. This can also, in some cases, be against the law.

A lot of people who create content online use the Creative Commons license, but a lot of other creators do not, which means you can not use their creations in any way, unless you get some kind of permission from them - which you probably won't get if they're not using Creative Commons in the first place. If you don't care about this and continue to use someone elses content on your site (for instance, a picture for a header) they can sue you if they choose to.

One last reason is that hotlinking doesn't give you any control of an uploaded file. If you host a file on your own server, it will stay there as long as you keep it there; an image hosted through someones website can be deleted or moved at any time. A creator doesn't need to keep their content online indefinitely and has all the rights in the world to remove it at any point in time; if this creates dead content on your site, that is not their problem.

How can you avoid hotlinking?

For the hoster:

Personally, when I post the art I have made I use Imgur links. This ensures that when someone uses anything of mine on their site, Imgur is the host rather than my site. If you create a lot of your own art I'd recommend doing this as well! This is also beneficial as this doesn't use up space on your NeoCities account, which comes in handy as NeoCities does have a limit to how much space you have :D

However, for other things (like the gifs I have before links in my nav bar) those are posted directly to my site so if people use those (which they shouldn't be as they aren't for people except me!) would be hotlinking to me unless they save them to their own server.

There are services out there that you can use to protect youself, though! This site has the info you need to follow for a few of the most popular ways of hotlink protection, some of which are specific to certain sites. Find whichever works best for you and protect youself from virtual thievery ♡

For the hostee:

The easiest way not to hotlink is to save whichever file you want to use - as long as you're allowed to! - and upload them to your own server. On NeoCities, you do this by going to your dashboard and tapping the 'Upload' button. From there, you can link to the file that's hosted on your own server!

Another way is by using the link of the image hoster the creator uses, if they use one. Not all website owners upload their content to their own site; some, like me, use sites like Imgur to host their files for them. If this is the case, you can usually find this out by opening their file in another tab. If it redirects to a site like Imgur, you can safely use that link as it doesn't use up bandwidth on their site as it's not even hosted there in the first place! This is not a completely reliable method, however, as the image can be deleted or moved at any time.