Hotlinking is an expression that refers to the inclusion of images on a given website using direct links. When you have site A, for example, and someone creates website B and wants to include a couple of images from your website, they're able to either save the images and then add them on their website or they can simply place links on their Internet site to the images on yours. As a result, each time a visitor opens site B, site B will steal traffic from your own website A, because the images will load directly from your website hosting account. This method is usually used for documents and other kinds of files also. If you wish to prevent third parties from stealing your content and from using your own hosting account’s resources, you can limit their capability to use direct links to your files on their websites.

Hotlinking Protection in Website Hosting

There is a method for preventing the hotlinking of your images by using an .htaccess file within the website’s root directory, but if you aren't very tech-savvy, we furthermore provide a very easy-to-work-with tool that will allow you to activate the protection with just a few mouse clicks and without entering any code. The tool may be accessed via the Hepsia CP, included with all our Linux website hosting and the only 2 things which you'll need to select are a domain/subdomain from a drop-down menu and whether the protection must be activated for the main site folder or for some subfolder. Our system will do the rest, so you shall not need to do anything else by hand on your end. If you want to turn off the hotlink protection option at one point, you'll simply have to go back to the same section, to mark the checkbox next to it and to click on the Delete button.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting

If you open a semi-dedicated server account and you find out that somebody is linking to your files without your approval, you will be able to easily cut them off by activating the hotlink security feature that we provide. While the standard way to do this is to set up an .htaccess file, we have got a special tool that is able to execute this automatically and you will simply have to select the Internet site in question and to choose whether our system should generate the necessary file in the main folder or within a subfolder. The tool is part of our custom made Hepsia Control Panel and features the exact same user-friendly interface, so you'll be able to use it without any issues even if you have never used any web hosting service before. You may deactivate the hotlink security feature for any website/folder with a mouse click through exactly the same section.