Hotlinking is an expression that represents the inclusion of images on a given Internet site using direct links. In case you have site A, for example, and someone creates site B and wants to add a few images from your Internet site, they could either save the images and then include them on their site or they could simply put links on their website to the images on yours. Consequently, every time a visitor opens website B, site B will steal traffic from your own site A, since the images will load directly from your website hosting account. This approach is typically used for documents and other kinds of files too. If you'd like to prevent third parties from stealing your content and from using your own web hosting account’s resources, you are able to restrict their capability to use direct links to your files on their websites.

Hotlinking Protection in Shared Website Hosting

There's a simple way of avoiding the hotlinking of your images by using an .htaccess file inside the website’s root directory, but if you are not very tech-savvy, we also offer a very helpful tool that will permit you to enable the protection with several clicks and without typing any code. The tool may be accessed via the Hepsia CP, included with all our shared website hosting plans and the only two things which you will have to choose are a domain/subdomain from a drop-down menu and whether the protection has to be enabled for the main Internet site folder or for some subfolder. Our system shall do the rest, so you shall not need to do anything else personally on your end. If you wish to deactivate the hotlink protection option sometime, you'll simply have to come back to the exact same section, to mark the checkbox next to it and to click on the Delete button.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers

If you don't want others to use your images on their websites without your approval, you may easily activate the hotlink protection function, that's offered with all semi-dedicated server package deals. Instead of generating an .htaccess file by hand within the website folder and writing some code inside it, which is the common method to deny direct linking to files, you may use an exceedingly simple tool, which we've included in the Hepsia CP. Using it, you'll only have to pick the website that should be secured and our system will do the rest. Additionally, you can make a decision whether the .htaccess file needs to be set up directly inside the root folder or in a subfolder, if you want to enable the hotlink protection function just for some content and not for the entire website. Disabling it is just as effortless - you will only have to mark the checkbox beside the particular website and to click on the Delete button.