Hotlinking is a term which represents the inclusion of images on a particular site through direct links. In case you have website A, for example, and someone creates website B and wants to add a couple of images from your Internet site, they can either save the images and then include them on their website or they may simply place links on their website to the images on yours. Consequently, every time a visitor opens website B, site B will steal traffic from your own website A, as the images shall load directly from your website hosting account. This method is usually used for documents and other sorts of files also. If you would like to prevent 3rd parties from stealing your content and from using your own website hosting account’s resources, you'll be able to restrict their capability to use direct links to your files on their Internet sites.

Hotlinking Protection in Website Hosting

Due to the fact that our website hosting come with a simple and handy hotlink protection tool, you will be able to shield your content from displaying on third-party Internet sites with literally only two clicks, even if you don't have a lot of experience with this kind of matters. The tool is included with the Hepsia hosting Control Panel and once you open it, you'll only need to pick the domain or subdomain that you want to protect. Optionally, you could also choose if the hotlink protection will be active for the default domain root folder or only for a subfolder. You will not have to do anything else, since our system shall create an .htaccess file automatically inside the desired location and shall add the needed code within it. All Internet websites with enabled hotlink protection will be listed inside the very same section, so you could disable this service for each of them with a mouse click.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers

If you do not want others to use your images on their sites without your authorization, you can easily switch on the hotlink security feature, that is supplied with all semi-dedicated server plans. As opposed to setting up an .htaccess file manually within the website folder and writing some code inside it, which is the conventional approach to deny direct linking to files, you can use an incredibly simple tool, that we have incorporated into the Hepsia Control Panel. From it, you'll only need to select the website which has to be secured and our system shall do the rest. Optionally, you can choose if the .htaccess file should be set up directly inside the root folder or in a subfolder, if you want to enable the hotlink protection function just for some content and not for the entire site. Deactivating it is just as easy - you'll only need to mark the checkbox next to the particular Internet site and to click on the Delete button.