Question regarding built galleries
 

I've been building a few galleries with sponsor content. For some of them I am taking the same content from their FHG and building my own with a slightly different layout and maybe droppin a few pics. Most TGP sites preffer hand built galleries over FHGs. As you all know.

But i am linking the thumbs in my gallery to the jpg's hosted on the sponsors server. So its a cross between a custom gallery and a FHG. I do this to save bandwidth on my site. This is no problem from the sponsors stand point but will TGP owners have a problem with this setup? will my galleries get accepted or will they view it as a form of cheating?

Im sure it may vary from site to site but whats the concensus on this?

I´m not quite sure if hotlinking pics and vids works for fhg´s. As far as i know it doesn´t. i would prefer a gallery which doesn´t hotlink.

I believe the consensus is no hotlinked pictures.

Bandwidth is very cheap nowadays, and with the Cogent bandwidth provider turning over a new leaf, there is no excuse not to afford a decent server at less than $120/month. ;)

I think you'll find most TGP's (and Link Lists as well) don't allow any hotlinking at all - mostly because it's too much trouble for us to check & see who owns the other domain or if the sponsor allows it.

Damn!! Back to the drawing board.

Im scrambling now to change all the thumb links on 3 galleries i submitted to a few sites today. Hopefully i get the changes made before they review them.

Use caution. :) Most TGP sites take a hard stance against *any* changes being made to a gallery once it is submitted.

If you fear using too much bandwidth you should consider building free sites instead. They are much more bandwidth friendly. Sure, that's due to less traffic, but the traffic converts much better than TGP traffic. So it's a balance.

Yup, Freesite galleries will be the next step. But gotta work on getting traffic to my TGP and work out an efficient system to keep track of what galleries i submitted to who, and keep the right recips on the tops so as not to piss anyone off.

How much better do FS convert? I find most of them annoying. too many little adds all over the entry page. often difficult to find the link to see the galleries. Jumping back and forth between Gallery 1 and 2. odd stuff.

Should they be built with a small link to go back and forth from 1 and 2 or is it better to force the surfer to hit the back button and thus see the adds again.