Permalinks

A name and a URL that always show an image. You choose which one, and every page using the URL follows.

<img src="https://pixloom.dev/api/img/acme/home-hero" alt="Home page hero" />

A permalink is a name, like home-hero, with a URL that never changes. Put the URL on a page, in an email or in a CMS field. When you want a different picture there, change it in the dashboard. There is no deploy and no cache to clear.

Make one from any image: open it in the Playground or the Library and choose Save permalink. Your permalinks are under Images, Permalinks in the dashboard.

What the URL shows right now

Each permalink's page in the dashboard opens with Live now: the image the URL is serving, its full URL, and one line saying what happens next, such as "Pinned. Shows this until you pin another" or "Rotates through 4 pinned images every day". The same image carries a Live badge in the grid below.

The URL picks its image by these rules, in order:

Pinned images win. If you pinned any, the URL shows only those, and never makes anything new. Pin one and the link is frozen on it. Pin several and it rotates through them.
Otherwise it shows an image it already has, in the permalink's style.
Nothing yet? The first visit makes one. That is the only time anyone waits, and it happens once.

Images you hid are never shown.

Refresh

Refresh is how often the link moves on: never, every hour, every 6 hours, every day, every 3 days or every week.

With pinned images, it moves to the next pinned image.
Without, it keeps showing the current image and makes a fresh one in the background once the window passes, so no visitor waits for it.
Set to Never, a link with one image keeps showing it, and nothing new is made. A link with several shows a different one on each visit.

A recipe site can set todays-dish to refresh every day and get a new dish daily without touching the page.

Choosing images

On a permalink's page, each image has two plain choices:

Button	What it does
Show this one	Pins it. The link shows only pinned images from then on.
Never show this	Hides it from this link. It moves to Hidden at the bottom of the page, where Show again brings it back.

Generate another adds a new image to the permalink, in its style or one you pick. If you have pinned images, it will not be shown until you pin it too.

Style

Every permalink has a default style. Add a style to the end of the URL to get the same picture in another look:

https://pixloom.dev/api/img/acme/home-hero
https://pixloom.dev/api/img/acme/home-hero/watercolor

Each style keeps its own images and its own refresh clock. Turn on style lock when editing the permalink and the style in the URL is ignored, so the permalink always looks the way you set it.

Audience

Set who the images are for (kids, big kids, adults) when editing, or add ?age=kids to the URL for one placement. New images are made to suit that audience.

Embedding

Three ways to put a permalink on a page, from the buttons at the top of its page:

Copy embed tag gives you an <img> tag with the URL and the data-pixloom-permalink attribute. With the embed script on the page, it also gets the shimmer while loading and the fallback rules.
Copy URL gives you the plain URL, for anywhere that takes an image address.
In code, data-pixloom-permalink="home-hero" on any image tag, once the script is on the page.

The URL needs no key. To stop other sites using it, add your domains to your key in Settings. See the image proxy for the full URL reference.

Deleting

Delete is in the menu (the three dots) on the permalink's page. The URL stops working on every page that uses it. The images themselves stay in your Images.