Hotlinking is a term that identifies the inclusion of images on a particular website via direct links. If you have site A, for example, and an individual creates site B and wishes to include a few images from your site, they're able to either save the images and then add them on their Internet site or they could simply place links on their Internet site to the images on yours. Thus, whenever a visitor opens Internet site B, site B will steal traffic from your own site A, since the images will load directly from your website hosting account. This method is typically used for documents and other types of files also. If you want to prevent third parties from stealing your content and from using your own hosting account’s resources, you'll be able to restrict their capability to use direct links to your files on their sites.

Hotlinking Protection in Shared Website Hosting

As our Linux shared website hosting provide a simple and convenient hotlink protection tool, you will be able to protect your content from appearing on third-party Internet sites with literally only 2 clicks, even if you do not have very much experience with such matters. The tool is available in the Hepsia hosting CP and as soon as you open it, you will only have to pick the domain or subdomain that you want to protect. Optionally, you can also select if the hotlink protection will be active for the default domain root folder or exclusively for a subfolder. You won't have to do anything else, due to the fact that our system shall create an .htaccess file automatically in the desired location and will add the required code inside it. All websites with active hotlink protection will be listed in the very same section, so you may disable this service for each of them with a mouse click.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting

If you have a semi-dedicated server account with us and you find out that somebody has hotlinked any of your images, you may use the security tool we have created and included in our in-house built Hepsia hosting Control Panel. Whenever you switch on this feature, a server-generated image shall appear on the third-party Internet site in place of your real images. You will only need to check out the Hotlink Protection section inside the Control Panel and pick the domain or subdomain that your website uses from a handy drop-down menu - it's as elementary as that. When necessary, you'll also have the option to switch on the feature for a specific subfolder and not for the website as a whole. Deactivating the protection is equally simple - get back to the same section, check the box alongside the particular website and then press the Delete button.