On the Hotlinking of Comics

[Dave]

Okay, in the past we've had a rule about the hotlinking of comics. We tried to dissuade the practice because it leached bandwidth from the artist(s) without giving them the page hits and ad revenue that these page views gave.

Well, vBulletin has an interesting feature that make it so we can hotlink the pictures and still link back to that page.

Step 1: Hotlink the picture using the IMG tag above.
Step 2: Immediately click on the picture and click the "Insert Link" button above. Paste that same address there or the address of the artist's main site.

Done! You now have hotlinked the picture and it's also a direct link back to the website of the artist. See example below.

I will allow any hotlinks done this way as long as the artist doesn't complain. So no PvP, please. Scott doesn't want his stuff hotlinked and we respect his wishes.

 

[bhamv3]

Huh, nice. I personally will still be putting them on Photobucket or Imageshack though, just to be safe.

Also, my girlfriend wants to go see The Final Destination. I don't like scary movies.

 

[Denbrought]

Eh, I just prefer to imageshack the thing. Only takes me a few seconds anyway.

 

[Dave]

I was going to find a TinyPic like mod as we had before, but vBulletin.org was down last night.

 

[elph]

Even though you've turned the image into a link, you're still leaching bandwidth from the artist without giving them the page hit.

As your example above, you've just turned the hotlinked image into a link directly to the image on the site. Also, even if it were to point the link part to "www.theaterhopper.com" you're still pulling bandwidth off the site without the real page hit ad revenue going to the artist.

Or am I really missing the obvious here again?

 

[Dave]

I guess that means I misunderstood the whole hotlinking thing. So I guess we'll keep going as we did until I find the TinyPic thing. There's nothing to see here. Move along.