Hotlinking is a term that refers to the inclusion of images on a particular site through the use of direct links. When you have website A, for example, and somebody creates website B and wishes to include a couple of images from your website, they are able to either save the images and then add them on their Internet site or they can simply place links on their site to the images on yours. Thus, each time a visitor opens website B, site B will steal traffic from your own site A, as the images will load straight from your web hosting account. This technique is usually used for documents and other kinds of files too. If you wish to prevent 3rd parties from stealing your content and from using your own website hosting account’s resources, you are able to restrict their capability to use direct links to your files on their sites.

Hotlinking Protection in Cloud Hosting

You can easily shield your content if you create an .htaccess file inside the website’s root folder, but if you do not have previous experience, you could use our hotlink protection tool. The latter is included with all cloud hosting package deals we offer and can be accessed via the in-house built Hepsia CP. The protection may be turned on in two easy steps - pick the domain or subdomain for the website in question, then select if our system should set up the .htaccess file inside the primary folder or within a subfolder and you shall be all set. You do not need any programming skills or any experience with this kind of matters, since there shall be nothing else to do. If you'd like to disable the protection at some time, you can see all of the websites which are protected inside the same section of the CP with a Delete button beside each one of them.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers

If you do not want others to use your images on their Internet sites without your approval, you could easily activate the hotlink protection function, that's provided with all semi-dedicated server package deals. As opposed to setting up an .htaccess file manually within the site folder and writing some code in it, which is the common way to deny direct linking to files, you can use an incredibly simple tool, which we have integrated into the Hepsia Control Panel. By using it, you'll simply need to choose the site that has to be secured and our system will do the rest. Optionally, you can decide whether the .htaccess file will be set up directly inside the root folder or inside a subfolder, if you want to switch on the hotlink security feature only for some content and not for the whole website. Disabling it is just as fast - you will simply have to mark the checkbox beside the respective site and to click on the Delete button.