Hotlinking is an expression that describes the addition of images on a particular website using direct links. If 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 could simply put links on their Internet site to the images on yours. As a result, whenever a visitor opens Internet site B, site B will steal traffic from your own Internet site A, since the images will load straight from your web hosting account. This technique is oftentimes used for documents and other sorts of files also. If you want 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 websites.

Hotlinking Protection in Shared Hosting

It will not require more than a number of mouse clicks to switch on the hotlink security function that we provide even if this is the first website hosting account that you use, due to the fact that all of our Linux shared hosting include a quite simple and easy-to-use tool that will permit you to prevent direct links to your content. The tool is a component of our advanced Hepsia Control Panel, so it provides the same intuitive point-and-click interface. When you log in to your account’s back office and visit the Hotlink Protection section, you will simply need to pick the domain or subdomain you want to secure from a drop-down list. If you'd like to switch on this feature only for a specific website folder, you will have the option to do that. All Internet sites with active hotlink protection shall appear inside this section and you can turn off the service by selecting the checkbox alongside the given site and pressing the Delete button.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting

If you create a semi-dedicated server account and you find out that somebody is linking to your files without your authorization, you will be able to easily cut them off by activating the hotlink security feature we offer. While the common way to do this is to create an .htaccess file, we've got a special tool which can easily perform this automatically and you'll only need to choose the Internet site in question and to choose whether our system should set up the required file in the main folder or within a subfolder. The tool is an element of our custom Hepsia Control Panel and features the exact same user-friendly interface, so you will be able to use it without any complications even if you have never used any website hosting service before. You are able to disable the hotlink protection function for any website/folder with a mouse click through the exact same section.