Hotlinking is a term that identifies the addition of images on a given website through direct links. When you have website A, for instance, and someone creates website B and wishes to add a few images from your site, they are able to either save the images and then add them on their Internet site or they can simply place links on their Internet site to the images on yours. Consequently, when a visitor opens Internet site B, site B will steal traffic from your own site A, because the images will load directly from your web hosting account. This technique is sometimes used for documents and other kinds of files as well. If you'd like to prevent 3rd parties from stealing your content and from using your own website hosting account’s resources, you can limit their ability to use direct links to your files on their websites.

Hotlinking Protection in Hosting

There is a way of avoiding the hotlinking of your images by using an .htaccess file inside the website’s root directory, but if you are not very tech-savvy, we furthermore provide a very easy-to-work-with tool that shall permit you to activate the protection with a few clicks and without typing any code. The tool could be accessed via the Hepsia Control Panel, included with all our Linux hosting services and the only 2 things which you'll have to select are a domain/subdomain from a drop-down menu and if the protection should be enabled for the main Internet site folder or for some subfolder. Our system shall do the rest, so you shall not need to do anything else by hand on your end. If you choose to turn off the hotlink protection option sometime, you will simply have to return to the same section, to mark the checkbox beside it and to press the Delete button.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting

If you have a semi-dedicated server account with us and you find out that someone has hotlinked any of your images, you may use the security tool we've developed and integrated into our in-house built Hepsia hosting Control Panel. When you switch on this function, a server-generated image shall appear on the third-party Internet site instead of your real images. You'll only have to go to the Hotlink Protection section in the CP and pick the domain or subdomain that your site uses from a practical drop-down menu - it's as elementary as that. If needed, you shall also have the option to switch on the feature just for a particular subfolder and not for the website altogether. Deactivating the function is just as easy - return to exactly the same section, check the box next to the particular site and then click on the Delete button.