What is a hotlink?
If you want to use graphics that someone else made, please download them and upload them again to one of the many image hosting sites.
If you're asking now why should you do this, i will give you an answer.
At first if you don't do this you cause a higher bandwidth for the person who made the graphic.
This whole bandwidth thing works this way:
I have a account at photobucket.com. It's a free account and i have an album size with 1 gigabyte (GB) and monthy bandwidth wit 25 gigabyte (GB). That's the limit i have for a free account.
For those who don't know anything about the sizes i will try to explain it.
1024 byte = 1 kilobyte
1024 kilobyte = 1 megabyte
1024 megabyte = 1 gigabyte
(it easier to calculate with 1000 instead of 1024)
If i upload a picture with a size of 200 kilobyte (KB) and you see this picture because i posted it somewhere my bandwidth lessens with 200 kilobyte. If 100 people see this picture the bandwidth lessens with 10 * 200 kilobyte = 2000 kilobyte = 2 megabyte. And if 1000 people see this picture my bandwidth lessens with 1000 * 200 kilobyte = 20000 kilobyte = 20 megabyte = 0,02 gigabyte.
You may thing that's not a big thing but if you use this picture with 200 kilobyte on 3 boards with maybe 5000 users it causes 200 kilobyte * 3 * 5000 = 3000000 kilobyte = 3000 megabyte = 3 gigabyte.
You can see with just one picture you can cause 3 gigabyte of my 25 gigabyte bandwidth.
And i've seen not just one of my pictures with my links on signatures on many boards. So i can understand why i and others have this problem with their bandwidth.
And btw there is a second aspect to this whole hotlinking issue. If you have a picture saved and uploaded again it's save for you.
The animated minibanners i made caused the most bandwidth for me. This is why i renamed the folder at photobucket where i saved the minibanners.
Now if you use the link to my minibanners (a hotlink) you won't see the minibanner anymore. You see this:
.
i won't rename this folder anytime soon. So you can't use it anymore.
If you had saved and uploaded it again, you could have still seen it.
i can't force anyone to do this and i won't do this (maybe i'm just asking nicely).
But if the bandwidth is exceeded pictures won't be visible anymore for the rest of a month. And this means the graphic maker can't show their new graphics for a while.