Hotlinking is a term that represents the addition of images on a particular website using direct links. When you have website A, for example, and an individual creates website B and wishes to add a number of images from your site, they can either save the images and then include them on their Internet site or they can simply place links on their website to the images on yours. As a result, each time a visitor opens site B, site B will steal traffic from your own Internet site A, as the images shall load directly from your hosting account. This method is sometimes used for documents and other types of files as well. If you'd like to prevent third parties from stealing your content and from using your own website hosting account’s resources, you'll be able to restrict their capability to use direct links to your files on their websites.

Hotlinking Protection in Cloud Hosting

You can easily shield your content if you generate an .htaccess file within the website’s root folder, but in case you do not have previous experience, you could use our hotlink protection tool. The latter comes with all cloud hosting packages we offer and could be accessed from the in-house built Hepsia Control Panel. The protection can be activated in 2 basic steps - select the domain or subdomain for the site in question, then select if our system should set up the .htaccess file in the main folder or within a subfolder and you will be good to go. You don't need any coding expertise or any experience with such matters, as there shall be nothing else to do. If you wish to turn off the protection eventually, you can see all of the websites which are protected inside the same exact section of the CP with a Delete button beside each one of them.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers

If you have a semi-dedicated server account with us and you discover that another person has hotlinked any of your images, you can use the protection tool we have designed and included in our in-house built Hepsia hosting CP. Once you activate this function, a server-generated image will appear on the third-party website in place of your actual images. You will only need to go to the Hotlink Protection section in the Control Panel and choose the domain or subdomain which your website uses from a handy drop-down menu - it is as elementary as that. If required, you will also have the option to switch on the feature only for a specific subfolder and not for the website in general. Deactivating the function is equally simple - go back to the exact same section, check the box beside the specific Internet site and then click on the Delete button.