Hotlinking is a term that refers to the addition of images on a given website by using direct links. In case you have website A, for instance, and someone creates website B and wants to include a couple of images from your website, they're able to either save the images and then include them on their site or they could simply place links on their site to the images on yours. Consequently, every time a visitor opens website B, site B will steal traffic from your own website A, because the images shall load straight from your hosting account. This technique is oftentimes used for documents and other sorts of files too. If you'd like to prevent third 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 sites.

Hotlinking Protection in Cloud Website Hosting

Due to the fact that our Linux cloud website hosting feature a simple and convenient hotlink protection tool, you'll be able to secure your content from showing on third-party websites with literally only 2 mouse clicks, even if you do not have very much experience with this kind of matters. The tool is available in the Hepsia hosting Control Panel and as soon as you open it, you'll just have to select the domain or subdomain you want to protect. Additionally, you can also pick if the hotlink protection will be enabled for the default domain root folder or just for a subfolder. You will not need to do anything else, since our system will create an .htaccess file automatically inside the needed location and shall add the needed code inside it. All websites with active hotlink protection shall be listed inside the exact same section, so that you can disable this service for any of them with just a mouse click.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting

If you have a semi-dedicated server account with our company and you discover that somebody has hotlinked any of your images, you may use the security tool we've created and incorporated into our in-house built Hepsia hosting CP. Once you switch on this option, a server-generated image will appear on the third-party website in place of your actual images. You'll only have to check out the Hotlink Protection section within the CP and pick the domain or subdomain that your website uses from a convenient drop-down menu - it is as simple as that. If required, you shall also have the option to enable the function for a particular subfolder and not for the website in its entirety. Deactivating the protection is just as effortless - go back to the very same section, check the box alongside the particular site and then click on the Delete button.