The WordPress.com Blog had a post called Introducing: A Diverse, Free Stock Photo Library where they talk about how WordPress.com users have access to free images that they can use in posts / pages that can be accessed directly from the Add Media option under Free Photo Library on WordPress.com itself when you are making a post / page, and how they are working to be more inclusive and increase the diversity of those free images:
https://en.blog.wordpress.com/2018/08/02/diverse-stock-photo-library-pexels/
Unfortunately using these images requires that they be added to your Media Library when you select them so I can not use them because I use hotlinked images from sources that allow hotlinking when possible because WordPress.com free accounts have a limited amount of storage in the Media Library so I do not want to risk running out of space because I make posts for every day, but these images can be a great resource for those who do not have this concern who want to start adding free images to their posts / pages that can be added directly from WordPress.com itself now without having to find them somewhere else.
It would be nice if these images could be hotlinked as well and / or if they did not count against our storage limit because then I would use them too when possible.
Thank you WordPress.com.
The end,
-John Jr
John Jr's Blog 
6 replies on “Introducing: A Diverse Free Stock Photo Library”
I had no idea this feature existed. Thanks for the info. Shame that using the pics counts towards storage. That’s quite the drawback for anyone who is close to their limit.
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Hello The Otaku Judge,
I either knew about it and forgot about it because it does not have a hotlinking option and counts against our space limit or I did not know about it either, I probably just forgot, but I am also disappointed that it counts against our storage limit (which is very limited in my opinion compared to many other services especially those that offer unlimited storage as long as your images do not surpass a certain quality).
You are welcome, and thank you for commenting.
-John Jr
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What do you mean they can’t be hot-linked? I managed to introduce pexels photos in my posts without losing any storage space, using the links
You can just go on their website and search there for the photos you desire 🙂
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*I replied to your comment before approving it so my reply magically disappeared when I approved your comment, and so I will have to try to type my reply from memory annoying because of this*
Hello Dupre,
I did not know what that word even was until a WordPress.com employee used it in reference to how I usually add images to my blog:
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotlinking
So Pexels allows and is okay with the hotlinking of images from their website without breaking the terms of service et cetera?
If so that is good, and thank you for letting me know; but I was referring to WordPress.com’s integration of Pexel images which does not allow hotlinking and forces you to use your storage.
So from what you are saying, then people like myself would be better just using the Pexel website instead of using WordPress.com’s integration of it; WordPress.com’s default upload method does not support hotlinking like it used to, and so when I hotlink images on my posts / pages I have to do it semi-manually using the insert link option after copying and pasting a direct link to an image so that I can have some of the control that the old WordPress.com upload method used to have before they removed most of the options because using the default upload method with cause the image to be added to your Media Library using up storage.
I have reported this to them several times before back when they were making the changes, the only recommended change they made was to somewhat allow semi-manual and manual hotlinking, but they never added the default options that they used to have annoyingly; without this small mercy I probably would have left WordPress.com, I still am not happy with the current system, but at least with a bit more effort and less options I can still somewhat do what I want to achieve though there are some bugs with the current system that have not been fixed and at least one of them I have not reported because I do not feel confident that they will fix it because recently reporting bugs has been a waste of time and effort that usually does not end with them getting fixed sadly because I seem to find the rarer and harder to replicate bugs that they usually do not care about fixing.
Thank you,
-John Jr
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IT allows you to use hotlinking. I didn’t use the integration in wordpress, because mainly I wanted to promote my pictures and you can only find them via search after they get featured. But I tried to use Google Photos (integrated in WordPress) and it gave me a headache, because it only shows up the latest photos.
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Hello Dupre,
The WordPress.com integration of Pexels and Google Photos is disappointing; the Google Photos integration also uses your storage even though the images are originally stored on your Google Photos account it forces a copy to your Media Library whether you want it there or not.
I guess they intentionally do this to try to get people to pay to upgrade from free WordPress.com accounts to paid accounts to get more storage space.
Thank you for commenting,
-John Jr
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