Hotlinking is an expression which represents the inclusion of images on a particular Internet site using direct links. In case you have website A, for instance, and someone creates website B and wants to add a few images from your website, they're able to either save the images and then add them on their Internet site or they can simply place links on their website to the images on yours. As a result, when a visitor opens site B, site B will steal traffic from your own Internet site A, since the images shall load from your hosting account. This process is oftentimes 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 web hosting account’s resources, you'll be able to restrict their ability to use direct links to your files on their sites.

Hotlinking Protection in Web Hosting

You can easily protect your content if you create an .htaccess file in the website’s root folder, but in case that you don't have previous experience, you should use our hotlink protection tool. The latter is provided with all web hosting package deals that we offer and can be accessed using the in-house built Hepsia CP. The protection can be turned on in 2 simple steps - choose the domain or subdomain for the Internet site in question, then pick if our system should create the .htaccess file within the main folder or within a subfolder and you'll be good to go. You don't need any coding skills or any experience with this sort of matters, since there will be nothing else to do. If you would like to remove the protection eventually, you can see all of the Internet sites which are protected within the same section of the Control Panel with a Delete button next to each one of them.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting

If you have a semi-dedicated server account with us and you find out that someone has hotlinked any of your images, you should use the security tool we have created and integrated into our in-house built Hepsia hosting Control Panel. When you activate this feature, a server-generated image will appear on the third-party website rather than your actual images. You will only need to visit the Hotlink Protection section inside the Control Panel and select the domain or subdomain which your website uses from a handy drop-down menu - it's as easy as that. If required, you will also have the option to activate the function for a particular subfolder and not for the website altogether. Deactivating the function is equally easy - return to the exact same section, check the box alongside the particular website and then press the Delete button.