Inline Linking - Common Uses of Linked Content

Common Uses of Linked Content

The ability to display content from one site within another is part of the original design of the Web's hypertext medium. Common uses include:

• Web architects may deliberately segregate the images of a site on one server or a group of servers. Hosting images on separate servers allows the site to divide the bandwidth requirements between servers. As an example, the high-volume site Slashdot stores its "front page" at slashdot.org; individual stories on servers such as games.slashdot.org or it.slashdot.org; and serves images for each host from images.slashdot.org.

• An article on one site may refer to copyrighted images or content on another site, avoiding rights and ownership issues that copying the original files might raise, although this practice is generally not accepted due to resulting bandwidth issues.

• Many web pages include banner ads. Banner ads are images hosted by a company that acts as middleman between the advertisers and the web sites on which the ads appear. The tag may specify a URL to a CGI script on the ad server, including a string uniquely identifying the site producing the traffic, and possibly other information about the person viewing the ad, previously collected and associated with a cookie. The CGI script determines which image to send in response to the request.

• Some websites hotlink from a faster server to increase client loading speed.

• Hit counters or Web counters show how many times a page has been loaded. Several companies provide hit counters that are maintained off site and displayed with an inline link.