Hotlinking is an expression which represents the addition of images on a given website through the use of direct links. If you have site A, for instance, and somebody creates site B and wants to include a number of images from your site, they are able to either save the images and then include them on their website or they may simply put links on their website to the images on yours. Consequently, when a visitor opens site B, site B will steal traffic from your own site A, as the images will load straight from your web hosting account. This method is typically used for documents and other types of files too. If you wish to prevent third parties from stealing your content and from using your own 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 Web Hosting

You can easily secure your content if you set up an .htaccess file inside the website’s root folder, but just in case you do not have previous experience, you need to use our hotlink protection tool. The latter is included with all web hosting packages that we offer and could be accessed using the in-house built Hepsia Control Panel. The protection could be turned on in 2 easy steps - pick the domain or subdomain for the site in question, then pick if our system should create the .htaccess file within the primary folder or within a subfolder and you shall be ready. You don't need any computer programming capabilities or any experience with such matters, due to the fact that there will be nothing else to do. If you want to remove the protection eventually, you could see all of the Internet sites that are protected within the same exact section of the Control Panel with a Delete button alongside each of them.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting

If you have a semi-dedicated server account with us and you discover that someone has hotlinked any of your images, you can use the protection tool we've developed and included in our in-house built Hepsia hosting Control Panel. As soon as you switch on this option, a server-generated image shall appear on the third-party site in place of your real images. You will only need to go to the Hotlink Protection section inside the CP and choose the domain or subdomain your Internet site uses from a convenient drop-down menu - it is as basic as that. If necessary, you will also have the option to switch on the feature for a specific subfolder and not for the website altogether. Deactivating the feature is as easy - go back to the exact same section, check the box alongside the given site and then click on the Delete button.