Late last night I made the call to block right clicking on all of my pages and to remove us from the images.google.com server. According to the instructions on the site, it will take a couple of days to be removed from their server. I made this decision because we were again getting hammered by people who were linking just to an image and not coming to this site. Bandwith fees may not mean much to you, and I don’t mind paying them in most cases, but there’s a difference in having to pay it if they’re coming to my site to actually read the strips and having to pay because they’re coming to the site to see a picture of Les Nessman.
I want as many of you to come to the site to read my strips. I want you to tell all your friends. I want all of your friends to come and have a great time here. I don’t mind paying bandwidth for you being here as long as you’re reading and enjoying the site. I do mind, however, if you’re forcing me to host images and the bandwidth fees for images you can host yourself. I’ve said time after time after time that you can steal my images or take them or whatever — if you host them yourself.
I’ve gone over our recent hits and they’re not going to pages. For example, yesterday we had 700+ hits from dvdtalk.com and not one of them went to a htm or html page. They all came from an image (which I’m trying to track down and kill as we speak) that someone linked to their message boards. What people don’t understand is that if you link to a URL on a message board, every time that thread is viewed it produces a hit on this site and eats up bandwidth. When it’s a little site (like someone’s blog and Les Nessman the other week), it’s not much bandwidth, but when it’s a major site (like the Ogre at Fark.com last month), it eats up bandwidth big time and I end up paying for it.
I’m sure by delisting us from images.google.com will cost us a lot of users; but let’s face it — they weren’t coming here to enjoy the site anyway. They weren’t sticking around and don’t care about the site. So I’m begging you, if you like the site — tell your friends about it. Link us. Send the link to Aunt Hellen if she’ll find it funny. Tell Uncle Joe I did a doctor who strip about Adric that he’ll laugh at (he’ll be the only one! ). Visit the site daily and enjoy my stuff if you want to; and if you want images, well …
Image policy from now on: E-mail me. Jamesknine@reallycoolsite.org. Tell me what you want. I’ll send them to you. If you’re a techtv person and want screen shots of yourself for a personal site e-mail me and I’ll send you a CD with everything I have of you. I don’t care how you use the pictures. I don’t want to know what you’re gonna use them for. I don’t even care if you link back to us. All I care about, in my cold little heart, is that I don’t have to host the bandwith. I gots bills to pay and it’s christmastime. So have a heart.
With that, I’m off to the doctor. Have a swell day.
k9
Couldn’t go to the doctor because the car doors were frozen shut. Once I pried them open I turned the key in the ignition and got both an engine and an oil light and the car wouldn’t start. Joy.
Images.google.com came through and blocked all images from this site at noon or so eastern today. Go Google. I’m sure folks who really want my images will find ways around my efforts to cut down on bandwidth use; but let’s face it, the average person won’t. It’s not like I minded sharing pictures (and still will share all you want if you e-mail me); I just really resented the bills I got for being forced to host them for use on someone else’s site. So I listened to Evil James’ (and others’) good advice for once and did what I had to do for the sake of the site.
Now I’m sitting here with the worst headache I’ve had in a while. Life is joy. Life is joy.
Peace.
k9