Hotlinking is an expression that identifies the inclusion of images on a particular Internet site via direct links. In case you have website A, for instance, and an individual creates website B and wishes to include a number of images from your site, they can either save the images and then add them on their Internet site or they could simply put links on their Internet site to the images on yours. As a result, whenever a visitor opens site B, site B will steal traffic from your own site A, because the images shall load straight from your hosting account. This process is typically used for documents and other types 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 limit their capability to use direct links to your files on their Internet sites.

Hotlinking Protection in Hosting

There's a way of avoiding the hotlinking of your images via an .htaccess file inside the website’s root directory, but if you are not very tech-savvy, we furthermore provide a very easy-to-work-with tool that shall permit you to activate the protection with a couple of clicks and without typing any code. The tool can be accessed from the Hepsia CP, which comes with all our hosting plans and the only two things that you'll have to choose are a domain/subdomain from a drop-down menu and if the protection needs to be activated for the main site folder or for some subfolder. Our system shall do the rest, so you will not need to do anything else manually on your end. If you decide to turn off the hotlink protection option at one point, you'll just need to come back to the exact same section, to mark the checkbox next to it and to press the Delete button.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers

We offer an uncomplicated solution to shield your content and even if you aren't quite tech-savvy, you could take full advantage of it with a couple of mouse clicks. The common way for you to enable server-side hotlink protection is to set up an .htaccess file and to include a couple of directives within it. With the tool which you'll find within the Hepsia Control Panel, supplied with all semi-dedicated server accounts, you will only have to pick the website which you would like to protect and our system will create the .htaccess file for you, adding all the essential content in it. You may also use this feature for only one folder instead of the whole site - you just need to specify where the .htaccess file needs to be set up. If you no longer require the hotlink protection to be enabled, you can deactivate it with one click via the same exact section of your Control Panel.