Hotlinking is a term which represents the addition of images on a given website through the use of direct links. When you have website A, for instance, and someone creates site B and wishes to add a number of images from your site, they're able to either save the images and then include them on their Internet site or they could simply put links on their site to the images on yours. Subsequently, when a visitor opens website B, site B will steal traffic from your own Internet site A, as the images will load from your hosting account. This method is oftentimes used for documents and other sorts of files also. If you want to prevent third parties from stealing your content and from using your own website hosting account’s resources, you are able to limit their ability to use direct links to your files on their Internet sites.

Hotlinking Protection in Cloud Web Hosting

Because our Linux cloud web hosting feature a simple and convenient hotlink protection tool, you will be able to shield your content from showing on third-party sites with literally just two clicks, even if you don't have very much experience with this sort of matters. The tool is included with the Hepsia hosting CP and when you open it, you will only have to pick the domain or subdomain you want to protect. Optionally, you could also pick 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, since our system will create an .htaccess file automatically in the preferred location and will add the necessary code in it. All sites with enabled hotlink protection will be listed in the same section, so that you can disable this service for each of them with a mouse click.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting

If you do not want other people to use your images on their sites without your consent, you could easily switch on the hotlink protection function, which is available with all semi-dedicated server package deals. As opposed to generating an .htaccess file by hand inside the site folder and writing some code within it, which is the common way to deny direct linking to files, you can use an exceptionally simple tool, which we have integrated into the Hepsia Control Panel. By using it, you'll simply need to choose the site which should be protected and our system will do the rest. Furthermore, you can determine if the .htaccess file should be generated directly in the root folder or inside a subfolder, if you would like to activate the hotlink security function only for some content and not for the entire site. Stopping it is just as simple - you'll only need to mark the checkbox next to the particular website and to click on the Delete button.