I have a bunch of mini sites that have their own hosting accounts. There are similar graphics in all of these sites and it would be nice to be able to have all of the graphics on one main site, so if there are changes to a graphic, I only have to change that one main site.

If I have a site, and lots of graphic on that site are hosted on another site, will this effect uploading time to a noticeable degree? I realize that graphic has to be found and pulled in from the other site – will this effect upload time for the visitors?

It shouldn't make any difference to the end user. They still need to download the image and it doesn't matter which server it comes from.

The only performance hit would be that a seconded DNS lookup is required to get the images, but I wouldn't worry about it.

Be sure that the host you use for the images allows hotlinking. It shouldn't be a problem if you're paying for the account but better to be safe than sorry.

The performance hit when drawing images hosted on other servers is slight. If you've designed your site well enough, it shouldn't matter that much.

The issue you're going to have is the issue of bandwidth. IIRC, hosting an image on another site requires the second site to transfer the image to the first, and then the first transfers it to you. In effect, you duplicate the bandwidth for the same image.

That's one that you'd have to get clarified though. I'm really not 100% sure.

bandwidth is an issue, I have less than 40 images on my host (I would be suprised if half of them are uses) and I use 10-25mb/day. I dont even want to know what it will be like when I have tons of images

Originally Posted by ADAM Web Design

The issue you're going to have is the issue of bandwidth. IIRC, hosting an image on another site requires the second site to transfer the image to the first, and then the first transfers it to you. In effect, you duplicate the bandwidth for the same image.

That's not true, the browser is what requests the images, not the server. Therefore when a page is loaded the browser will make a request to the second server to get the images and the image will be transferred directly to the users PC.

the only issue will be the user's route to the other server but in reality it shouldn't make a slight difference. unless the other server is sloooooooooow.