What is hotlinking and why should it be avoided?
Hotlinking is the term for inserting or linking to media files hosted on someone else's website or servers.
It is considered bad practice when creating websites or computer systems, as it relies upon a third party to ensure the site or system functions correctly.
In addition to potentially straining the host servers, the person or organisation hosting the hotlinked resources may incur additional hosting costs due to the bandwidth used.
It's also possible that the original website hosting the site could alter its content, either moving it to a new location or deleting it, leaving broken content, or altering its content in ways those who inserted the hotlink hadn't anticipated:
Hotlinking doesn't just apply to images but to any files or resources hosted on an external server, including audio, videos, and scripts.
While hotlinking can be convenient for site owners or cloud software providers as it reduces strain on their own hosting infrastructure, some sites that have fallen victim to it say the practice cheats them out of advertising revenue, reduces their brand awareness, and affects their site performance due to the additional bandwidth used.
How should I insert media or resources from another site?
Hotlinking may be fine if you have permission from the site's owner, as they can ensure they have sufficient server resources to handle any additional bandwidth - but in most cases, it should be avoided.
If you want to use a resource hosted by another site (and you have permission to do so), you should download the file and upload it to your own site so you don't leave another site shouldering the cost and performance impact of hosting it.
In the Aiir CMS, you can upload images, video, and audio files via the Media Manager to use on your website, mobile app, or skill.
If your radio playout system is directly playing audio content from a URL, you should download a copy of the file first and bring it into your own domain to prevent any issues with the file being updated/changed/removed, affecting your broadcast.
Stations using PlayoutONE can use FileCopy and Auto Importer to regularly fetch a URL from its original location and create a local copy to ensure it is played without any issues.
How do I stop other people from hotlinking my content?
The easiest way to prevent hotlinking is routing your traffic through a Content Delivery Network which has built-in hotlink protection like Cloudflare.
CDNs are designed to distribute the load on your site by caching its content on multiple servers around the world and serving users the files hosted by the server nearest them. This can reduce site load time for visitors and protect against hotlinking.
If you are sure another site is using resources you are hosting, you could send them a DMCA takedown request. However, you should consult your own legal advice before taking this route.
Aiir customers who believe their site's content has been hotlinked by another site should contact Aiir's support team. As we are hosting the content on your behalf and operating the hosting infrastructure, we may be able to block your content from being misused.