Hotlinking is a term which refers to the addition of images on a particular Internet site by using direct links. In case you have site A, for instance, and a person creates website B and wants to include a few images from your website, they are able to either save the images and then add them on their website or they could simply put links on their Internet site to the images on yours. Consequently, every time a visitor opens Internet site B, site B will steal traffic from your own Internet site A, since the images shall load straight from your hosting account. This method is oftentimes used for documents and other sorts of files also. If you wish to prevent 3rd parties from stealing your content and from using your own web hosting account’s resources, you can restrict their ability to use direct links to your files on their sites.

Hotlinking Protection in Cloud Hosting

You can easily protect your content if you create an .htaccess file in the website’s root folder, but in case you don't have previous experience, you could use our hotlink protection tool. The latter is included with all cloud hosting package deals we offer and could be accessed using the in-house built Hepsia CP. The protection can be turned on in 2 simple steps - choose the domain or subdomain for the site in question, then select if our system should create the .htaccess file inside the primary folder or in a subfolder and you shall be good to go. You don't require any computer programming expertise or any experience with this type of matters, due to the fact that there will be nothing else to do. If you'd like to disable the protection eventually, you will be able to see all of the websites which are protected in the very same section of the CP with a Delete button beside each one of them.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting

If you do not want other people to use your images on their Internet sites without your approval, you could easily switch on the hotlink protection feature, which is supplied with all semi-dedicated server packages. Rather than creating an .htaccess file by hand in the site folder and writing some code within it, which is the traditional method to deny direct linking to files, you may use an exceptionally simple tool, which we've integrated into the Hepsia CP. Using it, you'll simply need to select the site that should be secured and our system will do the rest. Furthermore, you can decide if the .htaccess file should be set up straight inside the root folder or inside a subfolder, in case you'd like to switch on the hotlink protection function only for some content and not for the entire site. Deactivating it is just as fast - you will simply need to mark the checkbox alongside the specific Internet site and to click on the Delete button.