Neocities.org
Hey guys. How do you feel about hotlinking? I used to see hotlinking as kind of a dick move, but due to the volitile nature of the web, and some websites going offline without notice (especially on neocities), should we hotlink each other's buttons? I saw this article: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5224197/javascript-check-if-server-is-online and it seems like an interesting way to track if websites are up.
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It looks like a neato way to track sites, and it would really help in identifying websites that are still alive.
Imagine every site had a file called imhere.png that everyone checks for before loading that site's button. Or maybe we'd run the check on the button? Just an idea.
IMO the benefit of hotlinking buttons is that the site i am linking to can update their button design whenver they will and it will update globally.
Another "problem" is that it will affect bandwidth numbers.
I don't see why you would hotlink creating all these potential issues when you can just re-upload a button, usually it's a small file and it guarantees it'll stay up. Probably will also improve page performance since it doesn't have to do an additional DNS request, start a session etc. (I think). I also appreciate the simplicity of just having it on your site. greetings and have a nice day
Hmm, good points.
One should curate their garden of buttons. Sure, hot linking would be a way for you to know if a site went offline, but like @lambdafun says, it impacts bandwidth for someone else. Also, it opens the door for vulnerabilities by allowing offsite content. Not worth it. Just comb through your links every now and then to make sure stuff is still online/working.
I guess the bandwith argument is true @lambdafun, and I see where you're coming from @corgan about vunerabilities. I guess my goal is to find a better way to point users to content that's still around. I think I'll implament this system for my BBS and other Ngrok projects that aren't always up.
@yudosai Perhaps you can script a ping to the server? Maybe something like so:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4282151/is-it-possible-to-ping-a-server-from-javascript