Hotlinking is an expression that refers to the inclusion of images on a particular site through the use of direct links. In case you have website A, for example, and somebody creates website B and wants to add a couple of images from your Internet site, they are able to either save the images and then include them on their site or they can simply place links on their website to the images on yours. Subsequently, whenever a visitor opens site B, site B will steal traffic from your own Internet site A, since the images shall load straight from your web hosting account. This process is sometimes used for documents and other sorts of files also. If you wish to prevent 3rd parties from stealing your content and from using your own hosting account’s resources, you can limit their ability to use direct links to your files on their Internet sites.
Hotlinking Protection in Shared Website Hosting
It won't require more than a number of mouse clicks to enable the hotlink security function we provide even if this is the first web hosting account which you use, because all our Linux shared website hosting services come with a quite simple and user-friendly tool that will permit you to stop direct links to your content. The tool is an element of our revolutionary Hepsia Control Panel, so it features the same exact easy-to-use point & click interface. As soon as you log in to your account’s back office and visit the Hotlink Protection section, you will only have to pick the domain or subdomain that you want to secure from a drop-down list. If you want to activate this function only for a certain website folder, you've got the option to do that. All sites with enabled hotlink protection will appear within this section and you can turn off the service by selecting the checkbox beside the given site and clicking on the Delete button.
Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting
If you start a semi-dedicated server account and you find out that somebody is linking to your files without your approval, you can easily cut them off by enabling the hotlink security function we offer. While the conventional way to do that is to generate an .htaccess file, we have got a special tool which can do this automatically and you'll only need to select the website in question and to decide whether our system should set up the necessary file within the main folder or within a subfolder. The tool is an element of our custom Hepsia Control Panel and offers exactly the same user-friendly interface, so you'll be able to use it without any issues even if you have never used any web hosting service before. You could deactivate the hotlink protection function for any website/folder with a click through the same section.