Hotlinking is an expression that represents the inclusion of images on a given site by using direct links. If you have website A, for example, and somebody creates website B and wants to add a couple of images from your site, 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, every time a visitor opens Internet site B, site B will steal traffic from your own Internet site A, since the images will load from your web hosting account. This process is sometimes used for documents and other kinds of files as well. If you wish to prevent 3rd parties from stealing your content and from using your own hosting account’s resources, you are able to limit their capability to use direct links to your files on their websites.

Hotlinking Protection in Shared Website Hosting

You can easily shield your content if you generate an .htaccess file within the website’s root folder, but in case you don't have previous experience, you need to use our hotlink protection tool. The latter is included with all shared website hosting package deals which we offer and could be accessed via the in-house built Hepsia CP. The protection may be turned on in 2 basic steps - pick the domain or subdomain for the website in question, then select if our system should create the .htaccess file within the main folder or in a subfolder and you'll be ready. You don't need any coding skills or any experience with this type of matters, since there will be nothing else to do. If you want to disable the protection at some point, you could see all the sites which are protected in the exact same section of the Control Panel with a Delete button alongside each one of them.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers

Our company offers an uncomplicated solution to protect your entire content and even if you are not quite tech-savvy, you can take advantage of it with a couple of clicks. The standard approach to activate server-side hotlink protection is to set up an .htaccess file and to include a few directives within it. With the tool that you will find inside the Hepsia Control Panel, which comes with all semi-dedicated server accounts, you'll only have to choose the site that you would like to protect and our system shall set up the .htaccess file for you, adding all of the necessary content in it. You can also use this function for just one folder as opposed to the whole website - you just need to specify where the .htaccess file needs to be set up. If you no longer require the hotlink security to be enabled, you can disable it with a single mouse click via the very same section of your CP.