Hotlinking is an expression that identifies the inclusion of images on a given site using direct links. In case you have website A, for example, and an individual creates website B and wants to add a number of images from your website, they're able to either save the images and then include them on their website or they could simply put links on their website to the images on yours. Thus, every time a visitor opens Internet site B, site B will steal traffic from your own website A, because the images will load directly from your website hosting account. This approach is typically used for documents and other types of files also. If you would like to prevent third parties from stealing your content and from using your own website hosting account’s resources, you could limit their capability to use direct links to your files on their Internet sites.

Hotlinking Protection in Hosting

You can easily protect your content if you generate an .htaccess file in the website’s root folder, but in case you do not have previous experience, you should use our hotlink protection tool. The latter is provided with all hosting plans that we offer and could be accessed using the in-house built Hepsia Control Panel. The protection may be activated in two simple steps - choose the domain or subdomain for the site in question, then choose if our system should create the .htaccess file within the primary folder or within a subfolder and you will be all set. You do not need any programming expertise or any experience with such matters, due to the fact that there will be nothing else to do. If you want to turn off the protection at some time, you could see all of the sites that are protected within the exact same section of the CP with a Delete button next to each one of them.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting

If you start a semi-dedicated server account and you learn that another person is linking to your files without your approval, you could easily cut them off by activating the hotlink protection function we provide. While the typical method of doing this is to set up an .htaccess file, we have a special tool which is able to do this automatically and you'll simply have to pick the site in question and to decide whether our system should create the required file in the primary folder or inside a subfolder. The tool is a component of our custom made Hepsia CP and features the same user-friendly interface, so you will be able to use it without problems even when you have never used any web hosting service before. You could turn off the hotlink security function for any website/folder with a click from exactly the same section.