Hotlinking is an expression which describes the inclusion of images on a particular website through the use of direct links. When you have website A, for instance, and someone creates site B and wants to add a couple of images from your website, they are able to either save the images and then include them on their Internet site or they can simply place links on their Internet site to the images on yours. As a result, whenever a visitor opens Internet site B, site B will steal traffic from your own site A, as the images will load from your website hosting account. This process is typically used for documents and other sorts of files too. If you wish to prevent 3rd parties from stealing your content and from using your own website hosting account’s resources, you could restrict their capability to use direct links to your files on their Internet sites.

Hotlinking Protection in Website Hosting

As our Linux website hosting packages provide a simple and practical hotlink protection tool, you'll be able to shield your content from displaying on third-party sites with literally just two clicks, even if you do not have a lot of experience with this kind of matters. The tool comes with the Hepsia hosting Control Panel and when you open it, you will just need to pick the domain or subdomain you want to protect. Additionally, you can also select if the hotlink protection will be active for the default domain root folder or only for a subfolder. You will not have to do anything else, due to the fact that our system will create an .htaccess file automatically within the preferred location and will include the required code in it. All websites with active hotlink protection will be listed within the very same section, so that you can disable this service for any of them with a mouse click.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting

If you have a semi-dedicated server account with our company and you find out that someone has hotlinked any of your images, you may use the security tool we have developed and incorporated into our in-house built Hepsia hosting Control Panel. Whenever you switch on this feature, a server-generated image shall appear on the third-party website as a substitute for your real images. You will only have to visit the Hotlink Protection section within the CP and pick the domain or subdomain that your Internet site uses from a convenient drop-down menu - it is as easy as that. When necessary, you shall also have the option to activate the feature only for a specific subfolder and not for the website altogether. Deactivating the function is equally effortless - go back to the very same section, check the box beside the specific site and then click on the Delete button.