When an image is displayed somewhere other than the site where it is stored, this is done through a process referred to as hotlinking.
When done with bad intent, hotlinking can use up a lot of bandwidth on your site's server.
Sometimes a server, the machine a website is run from, is set up to prevent hotlinking.
If a site runs on WordPress, security plugins and occasionally SEO plugins may prevent hotlinking protection. These tools work by checking the referrer given when an image is fetched from the site. If the referrer is not the site itself, the server either does not serve the image or displays a warning graphic in its place.
If you wish to use FeedBlitz's RSS or to use automated campaigns with images, hotlinking protection must be disabled on your site or server.
How to disable hotlinking protection
WordPress Sites
1. Temporarily turn off or disable your caching.
2. Deactivate all plugins on your site
3. Check to see if your images now display correctly in your FeedBlitz RSS feed* or preview your automated campaign**
4. If the images still will not display, contact the person that set up your website or your hosting provider for assistance. The issue may be code in your .htaccess file or settings on your server.
Please do not make changes to your .htaccess file unless you are familiar with this file's purpose and setup. An error in the .htaccess file can break your site.
5. If the images do display in your feed enable your plugins one at a time, repeating step 3. until your images no longer display. Then, check the settings of that plugin and disable any hotlinking protection, feed scraper prevention, or image theft prevention. If nothing seems obvious, please contact the plugin's support for assistance.
Hosting Provider Resources
All other platforms:
Please contact your provider for assistance.
*To check your FeedBlitz RSS feed:
- Log into FeedBlitz and navigate to your RSS feed's dashboard.
- Look in the top right menu for Settings > Force a Resync
- Open your FeedBlitz feed in a new browser tab/window and force the tab to refresh. Without doing this, your browser can load a cached version of the image, incorrectly displaying a warning or broken image.
**To preview your automated campaign:
- Log into FeedBlitz and navigate to your site, if you have multiple sites.
- Use the left-hand menu Campaigns > Active
- Select the campaign
- Use the top menu and select Settings >Preview and force the tab to refresh. Without doing this, your browser can load a cached version of the image, incorrectly displaying a warning or broken image.