Hotlinking is an expression that represents the addition of images on a particular website through the use of direct links. In case you have website A, for instance, and an individual creates website B and wishes to include a couple of images from your Internet site, they are able to either save the images and then include them on their site or they can simply place links on their website to the images on yours. Thus, every time a visitor opens website B, site B will steal traffic from your own site A, because the images will load from your website hosting account. This approach is usually 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 could limit their capability to use direct links to your files on their websites.

Hotlinking Protection in Cloud Web Hosting

You can easily secure your content if you create an .htaccess file inside the website’s root folder, but in case you don't have previous experience, you can use our hotlink protection tool. The latter is supplied with all cloud web hosting package deals that we offer and can be accessed from the in-house built Hepsia CP. The protection could be turned on in two basic steps - choose the domain or subdomain for the site in question, then pick if our system should set up the .htaccess file within the primary folder or within a subfolder and you will be all set. You don't need any computer programming expertise or any experience with this kind of matters, since there shall be nothing else to do. If you wish to remove the protection at some point, you can see all the sites which are protected within the same section of the Control Panel with a Delete button next to each one of them.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting

If you have a semi-dedicated server account with our company and you find out that somebody has hotlinked any of your images, you can use the protection tool we have developed and included in our in-house built Hepsia hosting Control Panel. When you activate this feature, a server-generated image will appear on the third-party site instead of your actual images. You'll only need to navigate to the Hotlink Protection section within the CP and choose the domain or subdomain that your website uses from a convenient drop-down menu - it is as elementary as that. If necessary, you shall also have the option to switch on the function just for a specific subfolder and not for the website as a whole. Deactivating the protection is equally easy - get back to the exact same section, check the box beside the specific site and then click on the Delete button.