Hotlinking is an expression that identifies the addition of images on a given website through direct links. In case you have website A, for example, and an individual creates site B and wants to include a number of images from your site, they can either save the images and then add them on their website or they can simply put links on their Internet site to the images on yours. As a result, each time a visitor opens site B, site B will steal traffic from your own website A, because the images shall load from your web hosting account. This method is sometimes used for documents and other kinds of files as well. If you would like to prevent 3rd parties from stealing your content and from using your own web hosting account’s resources, you can restrict their capability to use direct links to your files on their websites.

Hotlinking Protection in Hosting

There's a way of avoiding the hotlinking of your images via an .htaccess file inside the website’s root directory, but if you aren't very tech-savvy, we also give you a very user-friendly tool that will allow you to activate the protection with a few mouse clicks and without inputting any code. The tool could be accessed via the Hepsia CP, included with all our Linux hosting packages and the only 2 things that you'll have to pick are a domain/subdomain from a drop-down menu and whether the protection needs to be activated for the main site folder or for some subfolder. Our system shall do the rest, so you won't have to do anything else manually on your end. If you choose to deactivate the hotlink protection option eventually, you will just have to revisit the exact same section, to mark the checkbox next to it and to click on the Delete button.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting

Our company offers an uncomplicated solution to shield your entire content and even if you are not really tech-savvy, you could take advantage of it with several clicks. The conventional technique to turn on server-side hotlink protection is to set up an .htaccess file and to add a number of directives in it. With the tool which you'll discover inside the Hepsia Control Panel, included with all of the semi-dedicated server accounts, you will only need to select the Internet site which you need to protect and our system will set up the .htaccess file for you, adding all the essential content in it. You can even use this feature for just one folder rather than the entire website - you just need to specify where the .htaccess file has to be set up. If you no longer want the hotlink security to be active, you may deactivate it with a single click from the exact same section of your Control Panel.