Hotlinking is an expression that describes the addition of images on a given site via direct links. If you have site A, for example, and an individual 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 site or they can simply place links on their site to the images on yours. As a result, whenever a visitor opens site B, site B will steal traffic from your own site A, as the images will load directly from your web hosting account. This process is typically used for documents and other sorts of files too. If you want to prevent 3rd parties from stealing your content and from using your own website hosting account’s resources, you'll be able to limit their capability to use direct links to your files on their sites.

Hotlinking Protection in Website Hosting

There is a way of preventing the hotlinking of your images via an .htaccess file in the website’s root directory, but if you aren't very tech-savvy, we also offer a very intuitive tool that will permit you to enable the protection with a few clicks and without inputting any code. The tool may be accessed from the Hepsia CP, which comes with all our Linux website hosting packages and the only 2 things that you will need to pick are a domain/subdomain from a drop-down menu and whether the protection must be activated for the main website folder or for some subfolder. Our system shall do the rest, so you will not need to do anything else manually on your end. If you choose to disable the hotlink protection option sometime, you'll just need to return to the exact same section, to mark the checkbox beside it and to press the Delete button.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting

We offer an effective solution to shield your whole content and even if you aren't really tech-savvy, you'll be able to take full advantage of it with a few mouse clicks. The standard approach to enable server-side hotlink protection is to set up an .htaccess file and to add a number of directives within it. With the tool which you'll find inside the Hepsia CP, offered with all semi-dedicated server accounts, you will simply have to choose the site that you want to secure and our system will create the .htaccess file for you, adding all of the essential content in it. You can also use this function for just one folder as opposed to the whole Internet site - you just have to specify where the .htaccess file has to be created. If you no longer require the hotlink protection to be active, you can deactivate it with a single click via the exact same section of your CP.