Bandwidth Theft - How to Prevent Image Hotlinking in WordPress

Hotlinking can be a huge drain of resources for the target website, not to mention it is technically theft. That said, many times the hotlinker isn’t aware that this is an issue. In this article I’ll explain why hotlinking is bad and how you can prevent hotlinking on your WordPress website. What Is Image Hotlinking? The concept of hotlinking is very simple. You find an image on the Internet somewhere and use the URL of the image directly on your site. This image will be displayed on your website but it will be served from the original location. This is very convenient for the hotlinker but it’s actually theft as it is using the hotlinked site’s resources. It’s like me getting in my car and driving with gas I siphoned off my neighbour’s car. This might not seem like a big deal, but it could generate a lot of extra costs for you. The Oatmeal is a great example. The Huffington Post hotlinked a cartoon of his which consisted of multiple images. Since we’re talking about a major publication this could incur a lot of extra costs for The Oatmeal. In a classic Oatmeal move Matthew Inman – creator of The Oatmeal – replaced all of the hotlinked files with the following: He also took care to replace #wordpress #smallbusiness #entrepreneur

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