Hotlinking is an expression that refers to the addition of images on a particular Internet site through direct links. In case you have site A, for instance, and an individual creates site B and wishes to add a couple of images from your site, they're able to either save the images and then add them on their site or they could simply put links on their site to the images on yours. Thus, whenever a visitor opens site B, site B will steal traffic from your own Internet site A, since the images shall load from your hosting account. This process is oftentimes used for documents and other sorts of files as well. If you'd like to prevent third parties from stealing your content and from using your own hosting account’s resources, you could limit their ability to use direct links to your files on their websites.

Hotlinking Protection in Web Hosting

Because our Linux web hosting packages provide a simple and convenient hotlink protection tool, you will be able to protect your content from appearing on third-party websites with literally no more than two clicks, even if you don't have very much experience with such matters. The tool comes with the Hepsia hosting CP and when you open it, you will just need to select the domain or subdomain you want to protect. Additionally, you could also choose if the hotlink protection will be active for the default domain root folder or exclusively for a subfolder. You'll not have to do anything else, because our system will create an .htaccess file automatically inside the needed location and will add the necessary code in it. All Internet websites with active hotlink protection will be listed within the same section, so you can easily disable this service for any of them with just a click.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting

If you don't want other people to use your images on their Internet sites without your permission, you may easily enable the hotlink security feature, that is supplied with all semi-dedicated server plans. As opposed to creating an .htaccess file by hand inside the Internet site folder and writing some code within it, which is the standard way to deny direct linking to files, you can use a really simple tool, that we have integrated into the Hepsia Control Panel. Using it, you will only need to pick the site that needs to be protected and our system will do the rest. Optionally, you can choose if the .htaccess file needs to be set up straight in the root folder or in a subfolder, if you'd like to enable the hotlink security function just for some content and not for the entire Internet site. Stopping it is just as simple - you'll simply have to mark the checkbox alongside the specific site and to click on the Delete button.