Hotlinking is an expression that represents the inclusion of images on a given site through the use of direct links. If you have site A, for example, and an individual creates website B and wants to include a few images from your site, they can either save the images and then add them on their website or they may simply put links on their site to the images on yours. Consequently, when a visitor opens Internet site B, site B will steal traffic from your own Internet site A, as the images shall load straight from your website hosting account. This technique is typically used for documents and other kinds of files as well. If you want to prevent third parties from stealing your content and from using your own website hosting account’s resources, you'll be able to limit their ability to use direct links to your files on their sites.

Hotlinking Protection in Website Hosting

There's a way of avoiding the hotlinking of your images through an .htaccess file in the website’s root directory, but if you aren't very tech-savvy, we also give you a very time and effort saving tool that will permit you to activate the protection with a few mouse clicks and without inputting any code. The tool could be accessed through the Hepsia CP, which comes with all our Linux website hosting and the only 2 things which you'll have to choose are a domain/subdomain from a drop-down menu and if the protection needs to be enabled for the main Internet site folder or for some subfolder. Our system shall do the rest, so you will not need to do anything else personally on your end. If you choose to turn off the hotlink protection option at some point, you will only have 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 offer a simple solution to protect your entire content and even if you are not quite tech-savvy, you are able to take full advantage of it with several mouse clicks. The common way to turn on server-side hotlink protection is to create an .htaccess file and to include a couple of directives within it. With the tool which you'll discover in the Hepsia Control Panel, offered with all semi-dedicated server accounts, you'll only need to choose the Internet site that you intend to secure and our system will set up the .htaccess file for you, including all the needed 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 needs to be set up. If you no longer want the hotlink security to be active, you may deactivate it with a single mouse click from the same exact section of your CP.