Hotlinking is an expression that represents the addition of images on a given Internet site through direct links. If you have website A, for example, and someone creates website B and wishes to include a couple of images from your Internet site, they are 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. Consequently, each time a visitor opens website B, site B will steal traffic from your own site A, because the images shall load straight from your web hosting account. This method is sometimes used for documents and other sorts of files also. If you would like to prevent third parties from stealing your content and from using your own hosting account’s resources, you are able to limit their capability to use direct links to your files on their Internet sites.

Hotlinking Protection in Cloud Web Hosting

There is a way to avoid the hotlinking of your images by using an .htaccess file inside the website’s root directory, but if you aren't very tech-savvy, we additionally provide a very user-friendly tool that will allow you to enable the protection with just a few mouse clicks and without inputting any code. The tool can be accessed via the Hepsia CP, included with all our cloud web hosting plans and the only 2 things that you'll need to pick are a domain/subdomain from a drop-down menu and if the protection should be activated for the main website folder or for some subfolder. Our system will do the rest, so you won't have to do anything else manually on your end. If you want to disable the hotlink protection option at one point, you will only have to return to the exact same section, to mark the checkbox beside it and to press the Delete button.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers

If you create a semi-dedicated server account and you find out that somebody is linking to your files without your authorization, you could easily cut them off by activating the hotlink security function that we offer you. While the conventional method of doing this is to create an .htaccess file, we have got a special tool which can execute this automatically and you shall only need to pick the site in question and to decide whether our system should set up the necessary file in the primary folder or within a subfolder. The tool is part of our custom Hepsia CP and has the exact same user-friendly interface, so you will be able to use it with no difficulties even in case you have never used any website hosting service before. You'll be able to turn off the hotlink protection feature for any website/folder with a click from the same section.