Hotlinking is a term that describes the addition of images on a particular Internet site by using direct links. When you have website A, for example, and somebody creates website B and wishes to add a couple of images from your site, they're able to either save the images and then add them on their website or they can simply place links on their website to the images on yours. As a result, every time a visitor opens site B, site B will steal traffic from your own Internet site A, because the images shall load directly from your website hosting account. This approach is sometimes used for documents and other types of files too. If you want to prevent third parties from stealing your content and from using your own hosting account’s resources, you could limit their ability to use direct links to your files on their Internet sites.

Hotlinking Protection in Shared Web Hosting

It shall not require more than a number of clicks to activate the hotlink protection function which we provide even if this is the first website hosting account that you use, since all of our Linux shared web hosting include a quite simple and easy to work with tool that will permit you to stop direct links to your content. The tool is part of our innovative Hepsia CP, so it features the exact same easy-to-use point-and-click interface. When you log in to your account’s back office and visit the Hotlink Protection section, you'll only need to select the domain or subdomain that you want to secure from a drop-down list. If you'd like to enable this function only for a particular site folder, you've got the option to do that. All sites with active hotlink protection shall appear inside this section and you can easily deactivate the service by selecting the checkbox next to the given website and clicking on the Delete button.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers

We offer a simple solution to secure your entire content and even if you aren't really tech-savvy, you can take advantage of it with several mouse clicks. The standard way to activate server-side hotlink protection is to create an .htaccess file and to add a couple of directives inside it. With the tool that you will find in the Hepsia CP, provided with all of the semi-dedicated server accounts, you will simply have to pick the website which you intend to protect and our system will set up the .htaccess file for you, adding all of the essential content inside it. You can also use this feature for only one folder instead of the whole Internet site - you just have to specify where the .htaccess file has to be created. If you no longer want the hotlink security to be switched on, you can disable it with one click from the same section of your Control Panel.