Hotlinking is a term which refers to the addition of images on a given site through direct links. In case you have website A, for instance, and an individual creates site B and wishes to add a number of images from your Internet site, they are able to either save the images and then add them on their website or they could simply put 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 website A, as the images will load straight from your web hosting account. This method is oftentimes used for documents and other types of files also. If you wish to prevent third parties from stealing your content and from using your own web hosting account’s resources, you can restrict their ability to use direct links to your files on their sites.

Hotlinking Protection in Hosting

There's a method for preventing the hotlinking of your images through an .htaccess file within the website’s root directory, but if you are not very tech-savvy, we additionally give you a very easy-to-work-with tool that will permit you to enable the protection with several clicks and without typing any code. The tool may be accessed through the Hepsia Control Panel, included with all our hosting packages and the only 2 things which you'll need to pick are a domain/subdomain from a drop-down menu and if the protection has to be enabled for the main site folder or for some subfolder. Our system will do the rest, so you shall not have to do anything else manually on your end. If you decide to deactivate the hotlink protection option eventually, you'll just need to return to the same section, to mark the checkbox beside it and to click on the Delete button.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting

If you do not want other people to use your images on their Internet sites without your consent, you could easily switch on the hotlink security function, that is available with all semi-dedicated server package deals. As opposed to generating an .htaccess file by hand within the site folder and writing some code inside it, which is the standard approach to deny direct linking to files, you may use a very simple tool, which we have incorporated into the Hepsia CP. By using it, you'll only have to choose the website that should be secured and our system shall do the rest. Furthermore, you can make a decision whether the .htaccess file should be created straight in the root folder or in a subfolder, when you would like to activate the hotlink security function just for some content and not for the entire Internet site. Stopping it is just as easy - you'll only have to mark the checkbox beside the specific website and to click on the Delete button.