Huh? Caught? Caught at what?? Well, as you obviously know by now, caught at using someone else's graphics or files without their permission. Other pages on this site will tell you why this is wrong and you shouldn't do it. This page is just to focus on how you can fix things now that you realize you need to.

First step is: Pat yourself on the back! You're learning from your mistake. It's something we've all done at one time or other - even the Web Guard Webmaster made that mistake a few times back in the beginning. Going through these pages and wanting to fix things means that you care about the 'net community around you - and that is definitely a Good Thing.

If you were caught being a "bandwidth bandit" - directly linking to other graphics or files without taking your own copies and using them from your own site - then you'll need to remove the links to the files you've been using, and gather up replacement copies. If the original web author says it's okay, then you can grab copies of the same files. If not, you'll have to find different ones to use. (Note: If you don't already know, you'll have to modify the HTML code of your page to actually remove the files. If you've got one of our bandit graphics on your page, all you need to do to get rid of it is go into your HTML and remove the link to it.)

A great resource for finding free graphics and other files for homepage use is the links page at another Darklock site, Abstract Design Studio. There's plenty of links there to free graphics pages where you can find replacements for your old files, and more! So don't get too upset if you need to replace everything.

You also might not understand how to save off files and put them up in your own web directory. It's simple, really. Just follow these instructions:

• In your browser, go to the page with the image or file you want.
   
• Right-click your mouse over the image or file. (In a MAC, click and hold down.)
   
• This pops up a list of options - pick the option that says something about saving the image or file.
   
• Pick a directory on your hard drive and remember the name of the file so you can get to it later.

That's all there is to it to actually save things. To put them up on your server it gets a little more complex. The best advice we can give you is to send you to the proper pages elsewhere on the 'net.

Your first stop is to download or make sure you have an FTP program. FTP is File Transfer Protocol, which is how you actually get files onto your server. A really good program to use is WS_FTP. Click the name to go to the download page.

Once you've downloaded and installed the program, you'll need to use it to get your files up, which is a complex process for the newbie. There is a tutorial here which can help you get started with FTP. It's a concept that all web designers should know, whether you've just got a site with one page, or a hundred!

After you know how to FTP and have your own copies of things, you're set to go! All you need then is just to modify the HTML of your pages to reflect the new URLs of your files. The URL will be whatever directory you put the files into on your server.

If you need any more help than we've given you here, please visit http://www.free-help.com/ as it is a very nice site for answering these types of questions. There are people there who are happy to help all the time!

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Last updated:
19:51, Tue, 19.Aug.2008