Hotlinking is a term which represents the inclusion of images on a given website via direct links. In case you have website A, for instance, and an individual creates site B and wants to add a couple of images from your site, they're able to either save the images and then add them on their site or they may simply place links on their website to the images on yours. Subsequently, when a visitor opens Internet site B, site B will steal traffic from your own site A, as the images will load from your web hosting account. This technique is usually used for documents and other types of files also. If you wish to prevent 3rd parties from stealing your content and from using your own web hosting account’s resources, you are able to limit their ability to use direct links to your files on their websites.

Hotlinking Protection in Website Hosting

You can easily shield your content if you generate an .htaccess file in the website’s root folder, but in case you don't have previous experience, you should use our hotlink protection tool. The latter is supplied with all website hosting package deals which we offer and could be accessed from the in-house built Hepsia Control Panel. The protection could be activated in 2 simple steps - select the domain or subdomain for the site in question, then pick if our system should set up the .htaccess file inside the main folder or within a subfolder and you shall be all set. You don't require any computer programming capabilities or any experience with this type of matters, since there will be nothing else to do. If you want to remove the protection eventually, you could see all of the websites that are protected within the very same section of the CP with a Delete button next to each of them.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers

If you have a semi-dedicated server account with us and you discover that another person has hotlinked any of your images, you can use the protection tool which we have developed and incorporated into our in-house built Hepsia hosting Control Panel. Whenever you activate this function, a server-generated image will appear on the third-party Internet site rather than your real images. You will only have to check out the Hotlink Protection section within the Control Panel and pick the domain or subdomain that your website uses from a convenient drop-down menu - it is as easy as that. If necessary, you shall also have the option to switch on the function only for a particular subfolder and not for the website as a whole. Deactivating the function is equally effortless - get back to the exact same section, check the box beside the specific Internet site and then press the Delete button.