Hotlinking is an expression that refers to the addition of images on a given Internet site via direct links. If you have site A, for example, and an individual creates website B and wants to add a number of images from your Internet site, they're able to either save the images and then include them on their Internet site or they could simply put links on their Internet site to the images on yours. As a result, whenever a visitor opens Internet site B, site B will steal traffic from your own site A, since the images shall load straight from your web hosting account. This technique is sometimes used for documents and other sorts of files also. If you'd like to prevent 3rd parties from stealing your content and from using your own hosting account’s resources, you could restrict their ability to use direct links to your files on their sites.

Hotlinking Protection in Website Hosting

Since our website hosting provide a simple and convenient hotlink protection tool, you will be able to defend your content from displaying on third-party sites with literally only two clicks, even if you don't have very much experience with this sort of matters. The tool is available in the Hepsia hosting Control Panel and when you open it, you'll only need to pick the domain or subdomain you want to protect. Additionally, you may also choose if the hotlink protection will be enabled for the default domain root folder or just for a subfolder. You won't need to do anything else, as our system will create an .htaccess file automatically inside the preferred location and will add the needed code in it. All Internet websites with active hotlink protection will be listed within the very same section, so that you can disable this service for each of them with a click.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers

If you have a semi-dedicated server account with our company and you find out that someone has hotlinked any of your images, you may use the protection tool we have created and included in our in-house built Hepsia hosting CP. Whenever you enable this feature, a server-generated image shall appear on the third-party site in place of your real images. You will only have to check out the Hotlink Protection section inside the Control Panel and select the domain or subdomain your Internet site uses from a practical drop-down menu - it's as basic as that. If required, you shall also have the option to activate the function for a particular subfolder and not for the website in general. Deactivating the function is equally effortless - return to exactly the same section, check the box alongside the specific site and then click on the Delete button.