Hotlinking is a widely accepted Internet phrase for linking to another website’s images. Basically, if you build an Internet site, someone else may want to use the images you have and instead of downloading them from your site and then uploading them to their Internet site, they may simply put links straight to your website. In this way, every time a visitor opens their Internet site, the images shall be loaded from your account, hence stealing from your own monthly traffic quota, not to mention the copyright issues which could appear or that somebody could be trying to deceive people into thinking that they're in fact on your website. In rare occasions, documents and other kinds of files can also be linked in the same exact way. To stop this from happening and to avoid this kind of situations, you can enable hotlink protection for your site.

Hotlinking Protection in Cloud Web Hosting

You can easily shield your content if you set up an .htaccess file inside the website’s root folder, but in case that you do not have previous experience, you can use our hotlink protection tool. The latter is supplied with all cloud web hosting package deals we offer and could be accessed using the in-house built Hepsia Control Panel. The protection may be activated in 2 simple steps - select the domain or subdomain for the site in question, then pick if our system should set up the .htaccess file inside the main folder or inside a subfolder and you will be all set. You do not need any coding skills or any experience with this kind of matters, due to the fact that there shall be nothing else to do. If you would like to remove the protection eventually, you could see all of the Internet sites which are protected within the same exact section of the Control Panel with a Delete button alongside each one of them.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers

If you have a semi-dedicated server account with our company and you discover that somebody has hotlinked any of your images, you should use the security tool which we have created and incorporated into our in-house built Hepsia hosting Control Panel. Whenever you activate this feature, a server-generated image shall appear on the third-party Internet site as a substitute for your real images. You'll only need to check out the Hotlink Protection section inside the CP and pick the domain or subdomain which your Internet site uses from a practical drop-down menu - it is as easy as that. If needed, you'll also have the option to enable the function only for a specific subfolder and not for the website in general. Deactivating the feature is as effortless - go back to the exact same section, check the box next to the given website and then click on the Delete button.