Blogging best practices?

December 23, 2015 7:26 AM

I'd like to start a blog, but I haven't paid attention to any of the latest trends in the area. I have some specific questions below the fold, but my main question is: is there a current accepted style guide for blogging? Like, has anyone written an APA manual for wordpress?

I'm not looking for style/grammar guides, but I'd like to know what are considered the current best practices for linking to other websites, using images, citing on and offline references, and so on.

The major questions I have are generally around using other people's images. Is there a standard way to get permission for some images? How do I know who owns the image? How do you attribute that? Has someone somewhere written this down as a reference?

I'm not planning to make money on this if that matters, but I'd like to operate as ethically as possible if I'm using other people's work.

posted by Think_Long to Writing & Language (6 answers total)

Best answer: The bigger blogging sites that do a lot of "aggregating" often just use the images first and ask permission later. This can be frustrating. While there's an argument that Fair Use might apply, it's really better to

- use public domain images
- use images with licenses that are appropriate for what you'll be doing (many Creative Commons licenses allow reuse even commercial use. You can use Google Image searches to find CC-licensed images)
- write with enough lead time that you can ask for permission

Basically anything other than that puts you in bad-neighbor or risky-legal territory. That said, platforms like Tumblr are basically built on reblogging and passing along content (attributed or no) so it really depends on what you're trying to do and what sort of blog (specifically commercial or non-commercial) you are using.

When you are attributing photos, it's usually best manners to link to both the photo (on a page it appears on, not just directly to the image) and the creator's information or page. Hotlinking directly to a photo (i.e.pulling the image from the original server) is a no-no. If you google style guide stuff you find a ton of spammy marketing crap but there are a lot of people (librarians notably but also others) who have some common sense guidelines of the sort you are looking for. This page for example talks about how to quote and how to cite. I wrote a blog post about how to find public domain images (with some other useful info in the comments) in case that's helpful as well.
posted by jessamyn at 7:34 AM on December 23, 2015 [5 favorites]

Response by poster: Thanks jessamyn.

Dumb question: "Hotlinking directly to a photo (i.e.pulling the image from the original server) is a no-no." Does that mean linking directly to the page that only hosts the image (like a .jpg page)? Or something else? If I'm using someone else's photo (with permission), can I upload the file on my own page, and then provide the source page below it?

For context, I'm not planning on doing a lot of off-the-cuff reblogging and such. I'm thinking it will be more well-researched and curatorial, so there should be time to get permissions if needed.
posted by Think_Long at 7:59 AM on December 23, 2015

I know publications have in-house style/best practice guides, but I'm not aware of something that's public. Re images, the website I work for always gets permission and lists photo credits, and if we can't get permission, we don't run the story. Obviously, not everyone follows this practice- even large media companies that you would think wouldn't want to break copyright law. It drives me crazy to see other sites run pictures that I spent a lot of effort obtaining (or our company spent money licensing). I've never had trouble figuring out who an image owner is through a little Googling, but maybe this will vary depending on the type of image you want to use- do you have an example? This site for independent bloggers might have a little more info- here's one post.
posted by three_red_balloons at 8:17 AM on December 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

Best answer: If I'm using someone else's photo (with permission), can I upload the file on my own page, and then provide the source page below it?

it's worth asking but generally speaking if someone has an image with CC licensing that allows re-use, it's usually expected that you'll copy the image to your server and then include credit/links on your site. This can vary especially for some promo stuff (i.e. banner-type things for special events) where they might want to actually use the image impressions to keep track of "engagement"

And as far as hotlinking, it's a weird old word but basically it means that when you actually are displaying the image on your page, the image file is living on your server. And then when you give a credit, it's nominally so you can tell someone where you got it. So on Flickr, for example you can link to the image or you can link tot he page. The difference looks like this..

https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/540/19696907944_247dbd0e19_z.jpg (where did that image come from...? I have no idea)

https://www.flickr.com/photos/boston_public_library/19696907944/ (oh hey it's from Boston Public Library!)
posted by jessamyn at 8:52 AM on December 23, 2015 [3 favorites]

What Jessamyn is talking about (as a no on) is lazily pulling the URL for the photo and displaying their photo using their server bandwidth. It puts server load onto their site every time someone visits your site. This can cost other people money. In the past, when this was discovered, the photo was sometimes replaced with horrible images (gross, sexually explicit) in order to ruin the site of the offending party.

I generally post photos I have made or I link to things I find interesting without showing it on my site. I will embed, say, videos from sites that handily provide code for doing so. I figure if they provide such code, they are providing permission.

So that is my lazy, conservative means to blog and not have to consult a team of lawyers or study the space overly much. I mostly produce original content anyway. I write, take photos or draw and I blog to publish my stuff.

Maybe someday I will want to do more of reposting photos from other people, but, so far, posting my stuff, linking to articles or what not that I wish to discuss, or using "embed" codes has yet to get me in trouble with regards to copyright/fair use.

Best of luck.
posted by Michele in California at 11:26 AM on December 23, 2015

I can't seem to figure out the particular keywords to search for this, but in the last year or so there's been some awareness-building about the ethics of reusing and linking to work by marginalized communities (I've especially seen this discussed around people of color, though not exclusively).

Usually it's been Internet tradition that you link to your sources, and you don't ask to link something. However, due to increased waves of online harassment, there have been a number of bloggers who have asked that others do not link to their site, or directly embed their Tweets, or so on. Cite them by name (there's adjunct discussion about how the intellectual labor of marginalized people tends to be stolen by others without attribution) but don't make it too easy for harassers to track them down.
posted by divabat at 5:45 AM on December 24, 2015