Hotlinking is an expression that identifies the addition of images on a given Internet site through direct links. When you have website A, for instance, and someone creates site B and wants to include a few images from your Internet site, they're able to either save the images and then add them on their Internet site or they can simply place links on their site to the images on yours. Thus, when a visitor opens Internet site B, site B will steal traffic from your own website A, because the images will load directly from your website hosting account. This process is usually used for documents and other types of files too. If you wish to prevent 3rd parties from stealing your content and from using your own web hosting account’s resources, you can limit their ability to use direct links to your files on their websites.

Hotlinking Protection in Hosting

You can easily secure your content if you set up an .htaccess file inside the website’s root folder, but in case that you don't have previous experience, you should use our hotlink protection tool. The latter is provided with all hosting package deals we offer and could be accessed from the in-house built Hepsia Control Panel. The protection may be enabled in 2 simple steps - pick the domain or subdomain for the Internet site in question, then choose if our system should set up the .htaccess file within the main folder or in a subfolder and you shall be all set. You don't require any programming expertise or any experience with this sort of matters, due to the fact that there shall be nothing else to do. If you would like to disable the protection eventually, you will be able to see all of the Internet sites which are protected in the same exact section of the Control Panel with a Delete button beside each of them.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting

If you have a semi-dedicated server account with us and you find out that someone has hotlinked any of your images, you should use the protection tool that we have designed and integrated into our in-house built Hepsia hosting Control Panel. As soon as you activate this function, a server-generated image will appear on the third-party Internet site as a substitute for your real images. You will only have to navigate to the Hotlink Protection section in the Control Panel and select the domain or subdomain which your Internet site uses from a convenient drop-down menu - it's as easy as that. When necessary, you shall also have the option to activate the feature only for a specific subfolder and not for the website as a whole. Deactivating the protection is just as simple - get back to the very same section, check the box beside the given site and then click on the Delete button.