Hotlinking is an expression that describes the addition of images on a given site by using direct links. In case you have site A, for instance, and someone creates site B and wishes to include a number of images from your site, they can either save the images and then add them on their website or they can simply place links on their Internet site to the images on yours. As a result, every time a visitor opens site B, site B will steal traffic from your own website A, because the images shall load directly from your hosting account. This process is typically used for documents and other types of files also. If you want to prevent third parties from stealing your content and from using your own web hosting account’s resources, you'll be able to limit their ability to use direct links to your files on their sites.
Hotlinking Protection in Website Hosting
Due to the fact that our Linux website hosting packages include a simple and handy hotlink protection tool, you'll be able to protect your content from appearing on third-party websites with literally no more than two clicks, even if you do not have very much experience with this type of matters. The tool is available in the Hepsia hosting CP and once you open it, you will just have to select the domain or subdomain that you want to protect. Additionally, you may also choose if the hotlink protection will be active for the default domain root folder or exclusively for a subfolder. You won't need to do anything else, because our system shall create an .htaccess file automatically inside the desired location and shall include the necessary code within it. All websites with enabled hotlink protection will be listed within the very same section, so that you can disable this service for each of them with a mouse click.
Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting
If you don't want other individuals to use your images on their Internet sites without your consent, you could easily switch on the hotlink security feature, that is provided with all semi-dedicated server plans. Rather than setting up an .htaccess file yourself in the Internet site folder and writing some code inside it, which is the conventional approach to deny direct linking to files, you may use a very simple tool, that we've included in the Hepsia Control Panel. By using it, you'll only need to pick the Internet site which needs to be protected and our system will do the rest. Also, you can determine whether the .htaccess file needs to be created directly inside the root folder or in a subfolder, in case you would like to enable the hotlink protection feature only for some content and not for the whole website. Disabling it is just as easy - you will only need to mark the checkbox alongside the respective website and to click on the Delete button.