It's not stupid at all, your question--no way of knowing stuff sometimes unless you ask! (Going to use an outside LJ example as I'm not entirely sure how LJ handles the icons from a URL)
Ok, so on some forums they don't allow you to upload your avatar or icon to their website. Instead, you have to host it online somewhere like Photobucket or your own webspace. When this happens, every time someone loads that icon, they're using bandwidth from THAT site rather than the forum site. When you sign up for your own personal webspace, you're usually given a set chunk that is allowed to be uploaded from your site every month. Any time images you're hosting on that space is loaded anywhere, it uses a small bit of that.
So, for example, say you found an icon you liked a lot and decide to use it on a very popular forum site. What you should do is download the image to your computer, and then host it on Photobucket or your own website. If you went to the forum site and gave the URL of the image that you found on LJ instead of doing this, that's called a 'hotlink.'
Hotlinking is considered unfair because the whole point of people's webspace being theirs is violated when people they don't know use up their bandwidth. So, that's why you'll see people like snowflakie06 or teh_indy asking anyone who takes the icons they post to please don't hotlink--they likely have their own site that they upload to, instead of Photobucket.
I hope that was a coherent explanation! I tend to have a bad habit of assuming people know what I mean, so if I used a phrase or a word that was confusing, don't hesitate to ask! I won't be upset, I want to help you understand :) Also if there are any other terms that you find confusing in any way, feel free to ask me about them, I'd love to help out. It can be frustrating when you don't know what something means but you don't want to ask for fear of losing anyone's respect. You won't lose mine, I promise.
Oh! And thanks for the compliment about the icons!
Re: icon-y appreciation
Ok, so on some forums they don't allow you to upload your avatar or icon to their website. Instead, you have to host it online somewhere like Photobucket or your own webspace. When this happens, every time someone loads that icon, they're using bandwidth from THAT site rather than the forum site. When you sign up for your own personal webspace, you're usually given a set chunk that is allowed to be uploaded from your site every month. Any time images you're hosting on that space is loaded anywhere, it uses a small bit of that.
So, for example, say you found an icon you liked a lot and decide to use it on a very popular forum site. What you should do is download the image to your computer, and then host it on Photobucket or your own website. If you went to the forum site and gave the URL of the image that you found on LJ instead of doing this, that's called a 'hotlink.'
Hotlinking is considered unfair because the whole point of people's webspace being theirs is violated when people they don't know use up their bandwidth. So, that's why you'll see people like
I hope that was a coherent explanation! I tend to have a bad habit of assuming people know what I mean, so if I used a phrase or a word that was confusing, don't hesitate to ask! I won't be upset, I want to help you understand :) Also if there are any other terms that you find confusing in any way, feel free to ask me about them, I'd love to help out. It can be frustrating when you don't know what something means but you don't want to ask for fear of losing anyone's respect. You won't lose mine, I promise.
Oh! And thanks for the compliment about the icons!