Hotlinking is a term which refers to the addition of images on a given Internet site via direct links. If you have site A, for instance, and a person creates website B and wishes to include a few images from your Internet site, they could either save the images and then include them on their website or they could simply place links on their site to the images on yours. As a result, when a visitor opens Internet site B, site B will steal traffic from your own site A, since the images will load from your website hosting account. This technique is oftentimes used for documents and other kinds of files also. If you would like to prevent third parties from stealing your content and from using your own hosting account’s resources, you could limit their ability to use direct links to your files on their websites.
Hotlinking Protection in Website Hosting
It shall not require more than a number of clicks to enable the hotlink security feature which we provide even if this is the first website hosting account you use, because all of our Linux website hosting packages include a very simple and easy to work with tool that will allow you to prevent direct links to your content. The tool is an element of our innovative Hepsia CP, so it provides the very same intuitive point & click interface. As soon as you log in to your account’s back office and navigate to the Hotlink Protection section, you will simply need to select the domain or subdomain that you would like to protect from a drop-down list. If you'd like to activate this feature only for a certain Internet site folder, you've got the option to do that. All sites with enabled hotlink protection will appear within this section and you can easily deactivate the service by selecting the checkbox next to the given website and clicking on the Delete button.
Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting
If you do not want others to use your images on their websites without your authorization, you could easily enable the hotlink security function, that is offered with all semi-dedicated server packages. Instead of setting up an .htaccess file yourself in the Internet site folder and writing some code within it, which is the common way to deny direct linking to files, you can use a really simple tool, that we have included in the Hepsia Control Panel. Using it, you'll only need to select the website that should be protected and our system shall do the rest. Also, you can choose whether the .htaccess file needs to be created directly within the root folder or in a subfolder, if you'd like to activate the hotlink security function only for some content and not for the whole site. Stopping it is just as effortless - you will simply have to mark the checkbox alongside the respective Internet site and to click on the Delete button.