Hotlinking is a term which identifies the addition of images on a particular Internet site by using direct links. In case you have site A, for instance, and somebody creates website B and wishes to add a few images from your site, they're able to either save the images and then include them on their site or they can simply place links on their Internet site to the images on yours. Thus, every time a visitor opens site B, site B will steal traffic from your own Internet site A, because the images shall load straight from your web hosting account. This method is usually used for documents and other sorts of files also. If you want to prevent third 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 Web Hosting

It will not take more than a couple of mouse clicks to enable the hotlink protection function we offer even if this is the first website hosting account you use, because all our web hosting come with a very simple and easy-to-use tool that will allow you to prevent direct links to your content. The tool is a component of our advanced Hepsia CP, so it offers the same exact easy-to-use point & click interface. Once you log in to your account’s back office and navigate to the Hotlink Protection section, you'll simply have to choose the domain or subdomain that you'd like to secure from a drop-down list. If you want to switch on this feature only for a certain website folder, you will have the option to do that. All sites with active hotlink protection shall appear inside this section and you will be able to deactivate the service by selecting the checkbox alongside the given site and pressing the Delete button.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers

Our company offers an uncomplicated solution to protect your content and even if you are not really tech-savvy, you are able to take advantage of it with a couple of clicks. The usual approach to enable server-side hotlink protection is to create an .htaccess file and to add a number of directives in it. With the tool that you'll discover within the Hepsia Control Panel, which comes with all of the semi-dedicated server accounts, you'll simply need to choose the website which you want to secure and our system will create the .htaccess file for you, adding all of the essential content in it. You can also use this option for just one folder rather than the entire website - you just have to specify where the .htaccess file needs to be set up. If you no longer want the hotlink protection to be enabled, you'll be able to disable it with one mouse click via the very same section of your Control Panel.