Hotlinking is an expression which refers to the addition of images on a given Internet site through direct links. When you have site A, for instance, and somebody creates website B and wants to add a number of images from your website, they're able to either save the images and then add them on their website or they can simply put links on their website to the images on yours. Consequently, each time a visitor opens website B, site B will steal traffic from your own website A, because the images shall load from your website hosting account. This technique is typically used for documents and other kinds of files as well. If you want to prevent third parties from stealing your content and from using your own web hosting account’s resources, you could limit their ability to use direct links to your files on their sites.

Hotlinking Protection in Website Hosting

It shall not take more than several clicks to switch on the hotlink security function which we offer even if this is the very first website hosting account that you use, as all our Linux website hosting come with a rather simple and easy-to-use tool that will allow you to prevent direct links to your content. The tool is part of our advanced Hepsia CP, so it features the exact same intuitive point & click interface. After you log in to your account’s back office and visit the Hotlink Protection section, you'll simply have to pick the domain or subdomain that you want to protect from a drop-down list. If you would like to switch on this feature only for a particular website folder, you've got the option to do that. All sites with active hotlink protection shall appear inside this section and you can easily turn off the service by selecting the checkbox beside the given Internet site and pressing the Delete button.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting

We provide you with an uncomplicated solution to shield your whole content and even if you are not quite tech-savvy, you can benefit from it with a few mouse clicks. The standard approach to turn on server-side hotlink protection is to generate an .htaccess file and to include a couple of directives within it. With the tool which you'll find within the Hepsia CP, offered with all of the semi-dedicated server accounts, you'll simply have to select the site that you would like to secure and our system will create the .htaccess file for you, adding all the essential content in it. You could also use this feature for only one folder as opposed to the whole website - you just have to specify where the .htaccess file has to be set up. If you no longer need the hotlink security to be enabled, you may disable it with a single click through the same section of your Control Panel.