Hotlinking is an expression that describes the addition of images on a given site through direct links. When you have website A, for example, and someone creates site B and wishes to add a number of images from your Internet site, they can either save the images and then add them on their site or they may simply put links on their site to the images on yours. Subsequently, each time a visitor opens website B, site B will steal traffic from your own site A, because the images will load straight from your web hosting account. This method is sometimes used for documents and other types of files as well. If you would like 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
It won't take more than a number of clicks to switch on the hotlink protection feature which we provide even if this is the very first web hosting account you use, as all of our Linux website hosting feature a very simple and user-friendly tool that will enable you to prevent direct links to your content. The tool is an element of our revolutionary Hepsia Control Panel, so it features the very same intuitive point-and-click interface. After you log in to your account’s back office and navigate to the Hotlink Protection section, you will only need to pick the domain or subdomain that you'd like to protect from a drop-down list. If you'd like to switch on this function only for a specific Internet site folder, you will have the option to do that. All Internet sites with enabled hotlink protection will appear within this section and you can deactivate the service by selecting the checkbox beside the given Internet site and pressing the Delete button.
Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting
We offer a simple solution to secure your entire content and even if you are not quite tech-savvy, you are able to benefit from it with a couple of clicks. The common way for you to activate server-side hotlink protection is to generate an .htaccess file and to include a few directives inside it. With the tool which you will find within the Hepsia CP, which comes with all semi-dedicated server accounts, you will simply have to select the Internet site which you would like to protect and our system will create the .htaccess file for you, adding all of the needed content in it. You can also use this feature for only one folder instead of the entire website - you just need to specify where the .htaccess file has to be set up. If you no longer want the hotlink protection to be active, you can deactivate it with a single click from the very same section of your CP.