Hotlinking is an expression that represents the addition of images on a particular website through the use of direct links. In case you have site A, for example, and a person creates website B and wishes to add a couple of images from your site, they are able to either save the images and then include them on their website or they can simply put links on their website to the images on yours. As a result, each time a visitor opens site B, site B will steal traffic from your own site A, as the images shall load straight from your web hosting account. This process is oftentimes used for documents and other sorts of files too. If you want to prevent third parties from stealing your content and from using your own website hosting account’s resources, you'll be able to restrict their ability to use direct links to your files on their sites.

Hotlinking Protection in Cloud Website Hosting

It will not take more than a number of mouse clicks to activate the hotlink protection feature which we provide even if this is the 1st website hosting account you use, because all of our Linux cloud website hosting come with a very simple and easy to work with tool that will allow you to prevent direct links to your content. The tool is a component of our advanced Hepsia Control Panel, so it offers the same intuitive point-and-click interface. When you log in to your account’s back office and navigate to the Hotlink Protection section, you will simply have to select the domain or subdomain you want to protect from a drop-down list. If you want to activate this function only for a certain website folder, you will have the option to do that. All sites with enabled hotlink protection shall appear in this section and you will be able to deactivate the service by selecting the checkbox next to the given site and pressing the Delete button.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers

If you start a semi-dedicated server account and you learn that someone is linking to your files without your authorization, you can easily cut them off by enabling the hotlink protection feature we provide. While the standard way to do this is to generate an .htaccess file, we've got a special tool which can easily do this automatically and you will only need to pick the site in question and to decide whether our system should set up the required file inside the main folder or in a subfolder. The tool is an element of our customized Hepsia CP and provides the exact same user-friendly interface, so you'll be able to use it without any difficulties even if you have never used any hosting service before. You may switch off the hotlink protection function for any website/folder with a mouse click through exactly the same section.