Hotlinking is an expression which refers to the inclusion of images on a given site through the use of direct links. When you have website A, for example, and somebody creates site B and wants to include a few images from your site, they're able to either save the images and then add them on their website or they can simply put links on their website 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 from your website hosting account. This approach is oftentimes used for documents and other sorts of files as well. If you'd like to prevent 3rd parties from stealing your content and from using your own website hosting account’s resources, you are able to limit their capability to use direct links to your files on their Internet sites.

Hotlinking Protection in Cloud Web Hosting

You can easily secure your content if you create an .htaccess file inside the website’s root folder, but in case you do not have previous experience, you can use our hotlink protection tool. The latter comes with all cloud web hosting package deals we offer and can be accessed through the in-house built Hepsia Control Panel. The protection may be activated in 2 basic steps - select the domain or subdomain for the Internet site in question, then pick if our system should set up the .htaccess file in the primary folder or in a subfolder and you'll be ready. You do not need any programming expertise or any experience with this sort of matters, due to the fact that there shall be nothing else to do. If you wish to disable the protection at some time, you will be able to see all the websites that are protected inside the very same section of the Control Panel with a Delete button alongside each of them.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers

If you don't want others to use your images on their Internet sites without your permission, you could easily activate the hotlink protection function, that is provided with all semi-dedicated server plans. As opposed to setting up an .htaccess file yourself inside the Internet site folder and writing some code inside it, which is the standard way to deny direct linking to files, you can use a very simple tool, which we have integrated into the Hepsia Control Panel. With it, you will simply need to choose the website that has to be protected and our system shall do the rest. Optionally, you can decide if the .htaccess file will be set up straight inside the root folder or in a subfolder, in case you'd like to activate the hotlink protection feature just for some content and not for the whole site. Disabling it is just as easy - you will simply need to mark the checkbox alongside the respective Internet site and to click on the Delete button.