Stop hotlinking of images – generate credit text automatically

Hotlinking is the process by which a website uses an image from another website, thereby using his bandwidth. Some see it as theft while some think it is a free world so it’s okay.

Sometimes we all bloggers do it and it’s not good in the sense that it’s as same as theft. Stealing others bandwidth is a crime. Though often, bloggers credit the original source, many people do miss it as well.

Well, if you have original images on your website that you don’t want someone to hotlink, here’s a neat wordpress plugin that will make a win-win situation out of it. There are already known methods by which we can replace any images stolen by others with a nasty one (with MOD rewrites etc), but I think this plugin does it a more healthy and democratic way.

Here’s what it does.

When someone hotlinks images from your site, it automatically adds a credit text (which you can customize) to be placed on the original image.

There is a bit of .htaccess tweaking to be done, so this is not for the fait at heart.

Download the plugin here.