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WordPress is the most popular blogging software tool available on the Internet today. Many people use it to blog, share information, create an interactive website and add images to their site. The ability to add interesting images to blog posts is one of the many benefits to using WordPress. However, it also lends the potential for having images that are copyrighted to you to be stolen or to have your bandwidth siphoned from people who are hotlinking to your images without permission.
What is hotlinking? For anyone unfamiliar with the term this means that someone links to your post or your image. Instead of using the host of the person linking to the image, the link is served from the original web server, essentially stealing your bandwidth. This can mean increased traffic you may need to account for or even simple copyright infringement issues to deal with. Without permission, this practice can be a nuisance at best and damaging at worst. But, is there anything that can be done about this?
Hotlink protection can be enabled through the .htaccess file however, for novice users this can be daunting and complicated. So, the solution is to use a WordPress plugin called Hotlink Protection. All you need to do is install and activate it and then choose some particular settings. The plugin itself will default to not allowing hotlinking of images and will instead substitute another image. The default image that is displayed is a standard circle with a line through it. However, you can modify this image to a custom image of your choice if you wish.
This is a great option for anyone who wants to ensure their images attached to blog posts are not stolen or hotlinked. You can choose to use the default image or create an interesting or even funny image instead. It is easy to use and perfect for those who are not savvy with coding.
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