Hotlinking is an expression which identifies the addition of images on a particular website through direct links. In case you have website A, for example, and someone creates site B and wishes to add a number of images from your Internet site, they're able to either save the images and then include them on their Internet site or they can simply put links on their site to the images on yours. As a result, every time a visitor opens website B, site B will steal traffic from your own website A, since the images will load straight from your hosting account. This process is typically used for documents and other sorts of files also. If you would like to prevent third 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 Hosting

There is a way to avoid the hotlinking of your images by using an .htaccess file within the website’s root directory, but if you aren't very tech-savvy, we also give you a very user-friendly tool that will permit you to enable the protection with several mouse clicks and without typing any code. The tool could be accessed through the Hepsia Control Panel, offered with all our Linux hosting and the only 2 things that you'll need to select are a domain/subdomain from a drop-down menu and whether the protection has to be enabled for the main 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 want to deactivate the hotlink protection option at some point, you'll just need to go back to the same section, to mark the checkbox at the side of it and to press the Delete button.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting

We provide you with an effective solution to shield your entire content and even if you are not quite tech-savvy, you are able to take full advantage of it with a couple of clicks. The common way to turn on server-side hotlink security is to create an .htaccess file and to include 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'll simply have to choose the website which you would like to protect and our system shall create the .htaccess file for you, adding all of the essential content within it. You can even use this function for just one folder as opposed to the whole site - you just have to specify where the .htaccess file should be created. If you no longer require the hotlink security to be active, you can deactivate it with a single click from the exact same section of your Control Panel.