Hotlinking is a term that describes the inclusion of images on a particular website using direct links. When you have website A, for example, and somebody creates website B and wishes to include a couple of images from your Internet site, they can either save the images and then add them on their site or they could simply put links on their website to the images on yours. Consequently, each time a visitor opens site B, site B will steal traffic from your own site A, because the images shall load straight from your website hosting account. This technique is oftentimes used for documents and other kinds of files as well. If you'd like to prevent 3rd parties from stealing your content and from using your own web hosting account’s resources, you are able to limit their ability to use direct links to your files on their sites.

Hotlinking Protection in Web Hosting

It shall not require more than a few clicks to switch on the hotlink security feature we offer even if this is the very first web hosting account you use, due to the fact that all of our web hosting include a simple and easy-to-use tool that will permit you to stop direct links to your content. The tool is a component of our innovative Hepsia CP, so it features the same exact intuitive point-and-click interface. Once you log in to your account’s back office and visit the Hotlink Protection section, you will simply have to choose the domain or subdomain that you want to protect from a drop-down list. If you would like to switch on this feature only for a certain website folder, you will have the option to do that. All websites with active hotlink protection will appear in this section and you will be able to deactivate the service by selecting the checkbox next to the given website and pressing the Delete button.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers

If you create a semi-dedicated server account and you learn that somebody is linking to your files without your consent, you could easily cut them off by switching on the hotlink protection function which we offer. While the regular method of doing that is to set up an .htaccess file, we have a special tool that can easily execute this automatically and you will only need to select the website in question and to choose whether our system should create the needed file in the main folder or in a subfolder. The tool is an element of our custom Hepsia CP and features the same user-friendly interface, so you will be able to use it without any problems even when you have never used any website hosting service before. You are able to disable the hotlink security feature for any website/folder with a mouse click from the exact same section.