Here’s a question I had come my way.  “Can I embed my photos from Flickr in my WordPress site instead of uploading them to WordPress?”

Yes, you sure can.  Here is why I wouldn’t do that.

1.  Having your own website and using WordPress is something you do so that you have total control over your web presence.  If you are embedding from an external site you are going to be limited in some ways.  Such as . . .

2.  When you backup your WordPress site the embeded photo may or may not be backed up as well.  Rather depends on the site hosting it and your backup software/plugin.

3.  If the site hosting your image changes their code, TOS, API or such else your embeds may stop working.

4.  When the site hosting your photos is bought by Wal-Mart, Google, MicroSoft or whomever and is shut down because it doesn’t make a profit or competes with an existing service then you have no photos.

In my opinion your website should be as self contained as possible.  The only embedding I do on my sites any more is from YouTube.  And if YouTube changes or goes away any of these could affect me as well.  It’s a chance I take considering how large video files are.  For files as small as photographs I’m of the opinion you should upload ’em to WordPress and go with with that.