My Image Isn't Showing Up
From Barbelith
If you are trying to post an image on Barbelith, there are a few reasons why this might be.
Firstly, you may have entered the address of the image wrong. If you want to check beforehand, paste the address you are using into a new browser window and the image alone should turn up. You can then safely use that in the IMG tag as above.
Secondly, some sites, especially those that offer free hosting such as Geocities, don't allow you to link to images on them. If you can see the image but other people complain that they can't - or another image entirely, often saying something like "Hosted With Tripod" or "Don't Steal Bandwidth" turns up - this is probably the cause.
Why do they do this?
Every time someone posts a link to an image (well, most of the time - see below about caching) it has to be transferred from the original site to your computer. This uses up bandwidth and processor time on their site, and depending on their hosting deal may be costing them money. They quite frequently feel that they're not there to provide you with pictures of badgers to amuse your internet chums; if you want to see badgers you should jolly well come to their site and see them in the way they were originally intended.
Free web hosts are usually paid for by advertising on the pages they host, and if you link to images on them remotely then you're not seeing the ads, and they don't like that.
There's also the issue of the image you are trying to post possibly being copyrighted. If you are a digital artist you likely don't want someone passing off your work as their own.
Posting an image from one site on another site without permission is commonly known as "leeching" and "bandwidth theft", and is often considered bad netiquette, particularly if the file in question is large. If you are really unlucky, the host may substitute another, highly Not Safe For Work image for the one you're trying to post.
I can see the image but other people say they can't - are they lying?
The reason why this may be happening is that you have already seen the image on the page it was originally from, and your browser has cached (saved) it.
When it sees the same address on Barbelith it thinks "ah, no need to load it again, I'll just use the copy I already have and save a bit of time". Other people won't have visited the original and so won't have the image cached. You can check this by clearing your cache - on Internet Explorer, Tools / Internet Options / General / Delete Files... under Temporary Internet Files - the image should disappear from Barbelith.
I can't post the image I want, what can I do?
You could put in a link to the page with the image on it and mention where the image is. This isn't ideal, but if it's important it may be the easiest solution.
If you're absolutely desperate to get the image on a Barbelith page, you may have to save it, buy web space or use a free image hosting service and upload it to that. See Getting Images Onto The Web.
![[Main Page]](/faq/stylesheets/images/wiki.png)