Posting pictures to the boards. [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

Colmarr

2010-02-25, 02:43 AM

What am I doing wrong?

http://lh5.ggpht.com/_9EB9L1Wn8bg/S4YqcYN9XfI/AAAAAAAAANo/uNIi1ducbn0/s1600-h/Pieter%20big%5B3%5D.jpg

Obviously, I deliberately put the space in the [IMG ] tag, but I'm not sure what else is going wrong...

I just keep getting the little red X.

InaVegt

2010-02-25, 02:55 AM

What am I doing wrong?

Obviously, I deliberately put the space in the [IMG ] tag, but I'm not sure what else is going wrong...

I just keep getting the little red X.

The image is sneakily hosted as a webpage that pretends to be an image file. Likely to prevent hotlinking.

http://lh5.ggpht.com/_9EB9L1Wn8bg/S4YqcYN9XfI/AAAAAAAAANo/uNIi1ducbn0/s1600/Pieter+big[3].jpg
http://lh5.ggpht.com/_9EB9L1Wn8bg/S4YqcYN9XfI/AAAAAAAAANo/uNIi1ducbn0/s1600/Pieter+big[3].jpg <- actual image link.

Trixie

2010-02-25, 08:09 AM

The image is sneakily hosted as a webpage that pretends to be an image file. Likely to prevent hotlinking.

http://lh5.ggpht.com/_9EB9L1Wn8bg/S4YqcYN9XfI/AAAAAAAAANo/uNIi1ducbn0/s1600/Pieter+big[3].jpg <- actual image link.

Um, no. Both addresses are exactly the same. However, one of them has webpage character codes (%20 instead of +, etc) inserted rendering them unreadable to forum parser.

Shhalahr Windrider

2010-02-25, 08:21 AM

I would say Trixie’s got it.

And an off topic note: You don’t have to use spaces in your example code. Just use the [noparse] tag. Then you can produce:

http://lh5.ggpht.com/_9EB9L1Wn8bg/S4YqcYN9XfI/AAAAAAAAANo/uNIi1ducbn0/s1600/Pieter+big[3].jpg

InaVegt

2010-02-25, 09:14 AM

Um, no. Both addresses are exactly the same. However, one of them has webpage character codes (%20 instead of +, etc) inserted rendering them unreadable to forum parser.

No, they aren't. The original hasn't gotten that [3] in it.

I went to the original location, got the page source, and nabbed the actual URL.

Douglas

2010-02-25, 09:22 AM

No, they aren't. The original hasn't gotten that [3] in it.
Yes, it does. That's what the "%5B3%5D" is. %5B is the html character code for [, and %5D is the html character code for ].

InaVegt

2010-02-25, 09:35 AM

Yes, it does. That's what the "%5B3%5D" is. %5B is the html character code for [, and %5D is the html character code for ].

Explain this to me, then, please?

<html>
<head>
<title>Pieter big[3].jpg (image)</title>
<script type="text/javascript">

</script>
</head>
<body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000">
<img src="http://lh5.ggpht.com/_9EB9L1Wn8bg/S4YqcYN9XfI/AAAAAAAAANo/uNIi1ducbn0/s1600/Pieter+big%5B3%5D.jpg" alt="[Pieter big[3].jpg]" border=0>
</body>
</html>

It's what I get when I go to the link provided in the OP, and look at the source.

It tries -really- hard to pretend to be the same URL, perhaps. But, it is not.

Douglas

2010-02-25, 09:53 AM

Huh. You're right, but the brackets are not the difference. The difference is the lack of a -h and changing a space to a plus sign.

Here they are right next to each other. The first is the web page pretending to be an image, the second is the actual image:
http://lh5.ggpht.com/_9EB9L1Wn8bg/S4YqcYN9XfI/AAAAAAAAANo/uNIi1ducbn0/s1600-h/Pieter%20big%5B3%5D.jpg
http://lh5.ggpht.com/_9EB9L1Wn8bg/S4YqcYN9XfI/AAAAAAAAANo/uNIi1ducbn0/s1600/Pieter+big%5B3%5D.jpg

InaVegt

2010-02-25, 09:54 AM

Huh. You're right, but the brackets are not the difference. The difference is the lack of a -h and changing a space to a plus sign.

True, I made an error on -where- the difference was, I'll admit that.

NerfTW

2010-02-25, 03:09 PM

You shouldn't be hot linking to an image on a server you don't own to begin with. Besides stealing bandwith from the actual host of the image, you also have no control over it. You wouldn't get much sympathy if you wind up banned because someone replaced that picture with pornography.

Trixie

2010-02-25, 06:38 PM

No, they aren't. The original hasn't gotten that [3] in it.

Yeah, you replaced both instances of it in your post, that's why it was identical :smallredface:

Anyway, still, replacing this web code with actual characters is still recommended, and you can easily dodge most of these "pretending to be picture" sites by simply right clicking on picture, and picking 'view image'. That will also give you true www location.

You shouldn't be hot linking to an image on a server you don't own to begin with. Besides stealing bandwith from the actual host of the image, you also have no control over it. You wouldn't get much sympathy if you wind up banned because someone replaced that picture with pornography.

This is so wrong on so many levels I don't even know where to start :smallsigh:

NerfTW

2010-02-26, 11:53 AM

Oh? Enlighten me, please.

He's linking to an image on another server. In order to see that image here, unless there's some caching built into the board software, it needs to be pulled from that server, taking up their bandwith.

Since he's linking to a filename, all someone has to do is make an image with that file name and bam, now THAT image is being shown when loaded. This is a common tactic among MANY people when they find someone hot linking to their images.

So where exactly am I wrong?

Jimorian

2010-02-26, 01:44 PM

This is so wrong on so many levels I don't even know where to start :smallsigh:

No, it's absolutely right. Unless the hosting site explicitly allows hotlinking (for example, XKCD provides a hotlink address for each comic), it's best to rehost the image. However, now we're getting into copyright violation territory, so you'll also have to check with that site's policies in that regard (rehosting an OOTS comic is strictly verboten as the obvious example on this side (ETA: as would be hotlinking the comic)).

Fri

2010-02-26, 02:01 PM

I think it's about the 'servers'

seriously, how many of us have our own server? If we're only allowed to post images that's hosted in our own server, there won't be much images in the net...

InaVegt

2010-02-26, 02:05 PM

Zherog

2010-02-26, 04:22 PM

I think it's about the 'servers'

seriously, how many of us have our own server? If we're only allowed to post images that's hosted in our own server, there won't be much images in the net...

There's plenty of free image hosting sites.

And as for what Nerf said... He's exactly right. Hotlinking the image uses that site's bandwidth, and it runs the risk of the image being replaced with something that violates GitP rules; and if that happens, you still will get in trouble here. It doesn't even have to be pr0n; I've seen plenty of sites that replace hotlinked images with some obscenely huge image of nothing - for example, I recall one that replaced their images with a color palette. The width of the image was around 10 pixels; and the length was around 10,000.

Renegade Paladin

2010-02-27, 01:06 AM

lesser_minion

2010-02-27, 07:56 AM

I think it's about the 'servers'

seriously, how many of us have our own server? If we're only allowed to post images that's hosted in our own server, there won't be much images in the net...

As has been pointed out, there are at least three free image hosting services out there. I'm pretty sure quite a few blogging sites let you hotlink images from your own blog as well.

Finally, there's Opera Unite, if you don't mind people not being able to see your pictures while you're offline and happen to have a fairly decent internet connection.

Nerd-o-rama

2010-02-27, 10:05 AM

Also, to address Fri (a DeviantArt user) specifically, I believe DeviantArt explicitly allows hotlinking as well - especially since you're always linking your own art, which is unequivocally your property, even if the bandwidth isn't.