Freeport, Maine – July 2014

In Wednesday’s post, What Is Hotlinking? I gave an overview of the potential problems associated with linking to images on the web. At the end of that post I included a short summary of best practices for using images in blog posts. Since it was buried at the end of a post that was otherwise fairly technical and lacking of a catchy title, I think it is worth sharing those best practices again in this dedicated post.

Best practices for using images in blog posts.

1. Always try to use images that you own and upload to your blog. 
2. If you don’t own a suitable image then look for images in the public domain. Pixabay is a good place to look. Download the image and upload to your blog. 
3. If you cannot find a suitable image in the public domain then look for images that have Creative Commons licenses attached to them. Photosforclass.com makes this easy to do. Download the image, upload it to your blog, give proper attribution to the owner of the image. Alan Levine’s CC Attribution Helper also makes it easy to format image citations. 
4. If items 1, 2, and 3 above didn’t provide you with a suitable image then you can attempt to use an image under Fair Use guidelines. Fair Use is a murky water so Fair Use should be your last resort. If 1, 2, and 3 failed to produce a suitable image, repeat steps 1, 2, and 3 until you find a suitable image.