Hotlinking is an expression which refers to the inclusion of images on a particular website by using direct links. In case you have site A, for example, and somebody creates site B and wishes to include a couple of images from your website, they can either save the images and then add them on their Internet site or they may simply put links on their Internet site to the images on yours. Thus, every time a visitor opens website B, site B will steal traffic from your own Internet site A, because the images will load directly from your hosting account. This technique is usually used for documents and other kinds of files also. If you wish to prevent 3rd parties from stealing your content and from using your own web hosting account’s resources, you are able to limit their capability to use direct links to your files on their websites.

Hotlinking Protection in Hosting

As our Linux hosting service feature a simple and practical hotlink protection tool, you'll be able to defend your content from displaying on third-party websites with literally only a couple of clicks, even if you don't have very much experience with this kind of matters. The tool comes with the Hepsia hosting Control Panel and when you open it, you'll just have to pick the domain or subdomain that you want to protect. In addition, you may also choose if the hotlink protection will be enabled for the default domain root folder or exclusively for a subfolder. You shall not need to do anything else, as our system shall create an .htaccess file automatically in the needed location and shall add the necessary code within it. All websites with enabled hotlink protection shall be listed in the exact same section, so you can disable this service for each of them with just a click.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers

If you open a semi-dedicated server account and you find out that somebody is linking to your files without your consent, you could easily cut them off by enabling the hotlink security function which we provide. While the common way to do this is to set up an .htaccess file, we've got a special tool that can easily execute this automatically and you'll simply have to pick the website in question and to decide whether our system should set up the required file within the primary folder or in a subfolder. The tool is an element of our customized Hepsia CP and provides exactly the same user-friendly interface, so you'll be able to use it without difficulties even in case you have never used any website hosting service before. You are able to switch off the hotlink protection function for any website/folder with a click through the same section.