Hotlinking is an expression that describes the addition of images on a particular website through direct links. When you have site A, for instance, and somebody creates site B and wants to include a couple of images from your Internet site, they are able to either save the images and then add them on their website or they can simply place links on their website to the images on yours. Consequently, each time a visitor opens site B, site B will steal traffic from your own site A, as the images shall load from your website hosting account. This approach is usually used for documents and other sorts of files as well. If you want to prevent third parties from stealing your content and from using your own web hosting account’s resources, you are able to restrict their capability to use direct links to your files on their Internet sites.

Hotlinking Protection in Shared Website Hosting

It won't take more than a couple of mouse clicks to switch on the hotlink security feature that we offer even if this is the 1st website hosting account you use, because all of our shared website hosting plans feature a rather simple and easy-to-use tool that will permit you to stop direct links to your content. The tool is a component of our advanced Hepsia Control Panel, so it offers the exact same intuitive point & click interface. When you log in to your account’s back office and visit the Hotlink Protection section, you'll simply need to select the domain or subdomain that you would like to protect from a drop-down list. If you want to enable this service only for a certain site folder, you've got the option to do that. All websites with active hotlink protection will appear inside this section and you can easily disable the service by selecting the checkbox alongside the given Internet site and clicking on the Delete button.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers

If you do not want others to use your images on their sites without your consent, you can easily activate the hotlink protection function, that's provided with all semi-dedicated server package deals. As opposed to setting up an .htaccess file yourself inside the site folder and writing some code inside it, which is the conventional method to deny direct linking to files, you could use an incredibly simple tool, which we've integrated into the Hepsia CP. Using it, you will simply have to choose the Internet site that has to be secured and our system will do the rest. Also, you can choose whether the .htaccess file will be created directly inside the root folder or within a subfolder, in case you want to switch on the hotlink protection function only for some content and not for the whole Internet site. Stopping it is just as effortless - you will only have to mark the checkbox next to the specific website and to click on the Delete button.