Hotlinking is what’s happening when someone links to resources such as images, video, or audio files you host without your permission. It’s equivalent to someone using your utilities by plugging into your electrical outlets and then running up the bill, which you then have to pay. Even if your web host is selling you unlimited bandwidth, it still has consequences. First of all, the bandwidth (and storage or anything else unlimited they’re selling you) is never unlimited. If you’re hosting a lot of images or audio, and other people are linking to those files, your host is serving them every time someone else clicks on links from other websites, or every time someone else visits those websites that are using your images.

If your bandwidth usage is going through the roof, or even if your bandwidth usage seems out of the ordinary, your web host will do one of two things: Politely upsell you to get you to buy a more robust hosting package or shut you down.

It’s not a pleasant spot to be in when you either have to spend more money to deal with the hotlinking plague, or move hosts. But there are ways to protect yourself.

Stop Hotlinking with .htaccess

If you google hotlink protection, you’re going to find a ton of resources. This can become very confusing very fast if you’re new at this and you don’t know what to look for. it’s also mind-numbing if you do. Fortunately, there’s a very thorough resource with code examples you can use. I recommend you read the whole article, and so I’m not going to post any shortcuts. It will give you an understanding of what you’re doing when you choose to copy and paste the relevant code into your .htaccess file. I will tell you, however, that the file you need to be adding the code to goes in the root of your website. This is probably the most comprehensive strategy I’ve found and I use it myself. This strategy will work on any web host that gives you FTP access. So free hosts are likely out. Also, this only works on hosts running Apache, which is most of them.

Hotlink Protection Using Nginx

Since Nginx doesn’t use .htaccess files, you have to go about protecting against hotlinking differently. One method of protection is to add a location directive to your Nginx configuration file. Here are some example directives.

Depending on your setup, either of these methods will save you a lot of trouble in the long run. And if you’re thinking of taking a shortcut by linking to someone else’s files without permission, please consider doing something else like hosting any images or audio or video you intend to use on your own hosting account.

A word about embeds

Of course, if you’re embedding a video from Youtube or somewhere similar, you have permission. Services such as Youtube or Instagram or AudioBoom or anyone that offers embed code does so specifically to allow people to embed content on their websites. They also bear the costs of the bandwidth. Hotlinking is only a problem when you find websites that don’t offer embed codes or otherwise give permission to link to their files, and you link without asking first. So don’t worry about using your favorite Youtube video. And if there’s an image you want to use, contact the site’s author and ask. Odds are they will probably not host the image for you, but they will freely allow you to download it and use it on your site as long as there’s no copyright involved.

Christmas time is here again, and with that comes a ton of “ultimate list posts” full of tips for decorating your site for the season.

probably the most popular decoration tip is to let it snow all over your site. As a matter of fact, WPMU Dev just pushed one out the door that contains mostly snow plugins for WordPress that are completely free.

I promise. Even though I’m Jewish, I don’t hate Christmas. But snow on your site, (specifically the moving variety) is bad.

It creates a horrible experience for a lot of people, causing things like seizures and migraines, and dropping screen reader users into screen-refresh-hell.

If you must let it snow on your website, please do it responsibly. An even better option would be to forego the snow altogether and consider something a little less flashy like Christmas-themed still images with alt attributes.

Be as decorative as you want. Just don’t make it snow. By not doing so, you’ll ensure that all your readers and customers can enjoy a festive season.

This talk was given at WordCamp DFW by Kirk Bowman of The Art of Value. It puts forward a ton of practical steps to help you move from hourly billing (which creates a conflict between you and your customer) to value-based pricing. As a side note, the projector happened to not be working, so the talk included lots of descriptions of what would have been completely visual material if the slides had been available at the time.

If you’re interested in learning more about value-based pricing, there’s also a podcast at The Art of Value that is devoted to the topic.

This talk was given as part of a series of lightning talks at WordCamp San Francisco. Lightning talks were grouped in threes, and dealt with a particular topic, with each presenter spending five minutes elaborating on the theme that tied the session together. The above talk was given by Jennifer Bourn, who has also provided the slides and some deeper thoughts to go along with them.

Most of what’s covered here applies just as much to developers and implementers as it does to designers. We have to approach it a little differently, (we as developers, for example, can’t just tell our clients that this is bad code and shouldn’t be used, even though that is a factor), but these are still good principles to use when communicating with clients so that projects go smoothly and everybody is satisfied with the final outcome.

Code For The People is a six-person WordPress development agency based in the UK, known for their great service and the enterprise tools they’ve created. Automattic has acquired them and will be winding down the consulting part of their business as they join the WordPress.com VIP team to continue building the best tools and services for enterprises using WordPress.

Code for the People brings some unique qualities to the Automattic table, like developing WordPress solutions for government agencies and doing a lot of work on the multilingual front. They’re responsible for the development of Babbel.

Code For The People is coming to Automattic with a strong enterprise track record: it has already helped to build out sites for companies like IPC Media, which runs some 30 publications on WordPress; the Rolling Stones, and government agencies. The co-founders have a long history themselves of working not just in WordPress but also enterprises. Before starting Code For The People they cut their teeth at a range of businesses, including government organizations, to help them build sites. That expertise, and familiarity with the community of people working in those kinds of businesses today, will come in handy as this becomes an increasing focus for Automattic as it looks to grow its revenues.

“We have the largest and deepest audience profiles on the web.” — David Fleck, general manager of advertising at Disqus. Translation: We’re tracking everyone who visits a website with Disqus enabled and building a profile of them based on the content of the sites they visit and any comments they leave. “Deeper” than Facebook.

“So I’m particularly excited to announce that we’re bringing our native advertising product, Sponsored Comments, to the world of programmatic and we’re doing it on a global basis. […] Starting today, Xaxis clients, which include some of the best brands in the world, will buy and place Sponsored Comments advertising across much of the Disqus network.” Translation: It’s not comment spam if we’re getting paid for it.

The only thing that’s surprising about this is how long it took for sponsored comments to happen. One more reminder that if a service is free, you are not the customer, you are the product.

Via Matt