Hotlinking is a term which represents the addition of images on a particular Internet site through direct links. In case you have site A, for example, and somebody creates website B and wishes to include a number of images from your Internet site, they are able to either save the images and then include them on their website or they may simply place links on their site to the images on yours. Consequently, each time a visitor opens website B, site B will steal traffic from your own website A, since the images shall load from your web hosting account. This method is oftentimes used for documents and other kinds of files as well. If you want to prevent 3rd parties from stealing your content and from using your own hosting account’s resources, you can restrict their capability to use direct links to your files on their Internet sites.

Hotlinking Protection in Cloud Hosting

There's a simple way of preventing the hotlinking of your images through an .htaccess file within the website’s root directory, but if you aren't very tech-savvy, we also provide a very intuitive tool that shall permit you to activate the protection with just a few clicks and without writing any code. The tool can be accessed through the Hepsia CP, offered with all our Linux cloud hosting packages and the only 2 things that you will have to select are a domain/subdomain from a drop-down menu and if the protection must be activated for the main Internet site folder or for some subfolder. Our system shall do the rest, so you shall not need to do anything else manually on your end. If you wish to deactivate the hotlink protection option at one point, you'll simply have to return to exactly the same section, to mark the checkbox beside it and to click on the Delete button.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting

If you have a semi-dedicated server account with us and you notice that somebody has hotlinked any of your images, you can use the protection tool we've developed and integrated into our in-house built Hepsia hosting Control Panel. Once you activate this feature, a server-generated image will appear on the third-party site instead of your real images. You'll only need to navigate to the Hotlink Protection section inside the CP and select the domain or subdomain your Internet site uses from a convenient drop-down menu - it is as easy as that. If required, you will also have the option to enable the function for a particular subfolder and not for the website as a whole. Deactivating the protection is just as effortless - go back to the very same section, check the box alongside the specific site and then press the Delete button.