Hotlinking is a term that refers to the addition of images on a given Internet site by using direct links. In case you have website A, for instance, and an individual creates site B and wants to include a few images from your site, they could either save the images and then add them on their site or they may simply put links on their Internet site to the images on yours. Thus, whenever a visitor opens site B, site B will steal traffic from your own Internet site A, since the images shall load straight from your web hosting account. This method is typically used for documents and other types of files as well. If you want to prevent third parties from stealing your content and from using your own hosting account’s resources, you are able to restrict their capability to use direct links to your files on their sites.

Hotlinking Protection in Web Hosting

It will not take more than a number of clicks to switch on the hotlink protection function which we provide even if this is the 1st hosting account that you use, due to the fact that all our web hosting include a simple and easy to work with tool that will permit you to stop direct links to your content. The tool is part of our innovative Hepsia CP, so it has the exact same intuitive point-and-click interface. When you log in to your account’s back office and navigate to the Hotlink Protection section, you will only need to pick the domain or subdomain that you want to protect from a drop-down list. If you'd like to activate this service only for a certain website folder, you will have the option to do that. All sites with enabled hotlink protection shall appear in this section and you will be able to turn off the service by selecting the checkbox alongside the given Internet site and pressing the Delete button.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers

If you do not want others to use your images on their Internet sites without your permission, you could easily switch on the hotlink security feature, that's available with all semi-dedicated server package deals. Instead of generating an .htaccess file by hand within the website folder and writing some code within it, which is the common method to deny direct linking to files, you may use a very simple tool, that we have included in the Hepsia Control Panel. From it, you'll only need to select the Internet site which has to be secured and our system shall do the rest. Also, you can decide if the .htaccess file needs to be created straight inside the root folder or in a subfolder, in case you would like to activate the hotlink protection feature just for some content and not for the whole Internet site. Stopping it is just as easy - you'll simply need to mark the checkbox alongside the particular site and to click on the Delete button.