Hotlinking is an expression that describes the addition of images on a given Internet site through the use of direct links. If you have website A, for example, and an individual creates website B and wishes to include a few images from your Internet site, they could either save the images and then include them on their website or they could simply place links on their site to the images on yours. Consequently, each time a visitor opens Internet site B, site B will steal traffic from your own site A, as the images will load straight from your website hosting account. This approach is oftentimes used for documents and other kinds of files also. If you'd like to prevent 3rd parties from stealing your content and from using your own website hosting account’s resources, you'll be able to limit their ability to use direct links to your files on their sites.

Hotlinking Protection in Shared Hosting

Due to the fact that our Linux shared hosting services provide a simple and convenient hotlink protection tool, you shall be able to protect your content from displaying on third-party websites with literally only 2 clicks, even if you don't have very much experience with this type of matters. The tool is available in the Hepsia hosting Control Panel and once you open it, you will just need to pick the domain or subdomain that you would like to protect. Additionally, you may also select if the hotlink protection shall be active for the default domain root folder or only for a subfolder. You'll not have to do anything else, because our system shall create an .htaccess file automatically in the desired location and shall include the needed code within it. All websites with enabled hotlink protection shall be listed in the very same section, so you can disable this service for any of them with just a mouse click.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting

If you don't want other individuals to use your images on their websites without your permission, you could easily activate the hotlink security function, which is supplied with all semi-dedicated server plans. As an alternative to creating an .htaccess file by hand in the Internet site folder and writing some code within it, which is the common way to deny direct linking to files, you may use a really simple tool, which we've included in the Hepsia Control Panel. From it, you will simply have to choose the site which needs to be secured and our system will do the rest. Optionally, you can determine whether the .htaccess file needs to be set up directly within the root folder or within a subfolder, if you would like to enable the hotlink security function just for some content and not for the entire site. Stopping it is just as simple - you'll only have to mark the checkbox alongside the specific website and to click on the Delete button.