Hotlinking is an expression which represents the addition of images on a particular Internet site via direct links. In case you have site A, for example, and a person creates website B and wishes to include a number of images from your Internet site, they are able to either save the images and then include them on their Internet site or they may 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 Internet site A, because the images will load straight from your hosting account. This method is usually used for documents and other kinds of files too. If you would like to prevent 3rd parties from stealing your content and from using your own web hosting account’s resources, you could restrict their capability to use direct links to your files on their Internet sites.

Hotlinking Protection in Shared Web Hosting

You can easily secure your content if you set up an .htaccess file in the website’s root folder, but if you do not have previous experience, you could use our hotlink protection tool. The latter is included with all shared web hosting plans that we offer and can be accessed using the in-house built Hepsia Control Panel. The protection can be turned on in two easy steps - choose the domain or subdomain for the site in question, then choose if our system should set up the .htaccess file in the main folder or within a subfolder and you shall be all set. You don't need any computer programming skills or any experience with such matters, because there will be nothing else to do. If you wish to remove the protection eventually, you could see all of the Internet sites which are protected inside the very same section of the CP with a Delete button alongside each of them.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting

If you have a semi-dedicated server account with our company and you notice that another person has hotlinked any of your images, you can use the security tool which we have designed and incorporated into our in-house built Hepsia hosting CP. When you enable this function, a server-generated image will appear on the third-party website rather than your actual images. You will only have to go to the Hotlink Protection section within the Control Panel and select the domain or subdomain which your website uses from a handy drop-down menu - it is as basic as that. If necessary, you will also have the option to switch on the feature for a particular subfolder and not for the website altogether. Deactivating the function is just as easy - return to the same section, check the box next to the particular site and then press the Delete button.