Hotlinking is an expression that identifies the inclusion of images on a given site through the use of direct links. If you have site A, for instance, and somebody creates website B and wishes to add a couple of images from your site, they're able to either save the images and then add them on their website or they can simply place links on their site to the images on yours. Subsequently, each time a visitor opens site B, site B will steal traffic from your own site A, because the images will load from your hosting account. This method is typically used for documents and other types of files too. If you would like to prevent third parties from stealing your content and from using your own hosting account’s resources, you can restrict their capability to use direct links to your files on their Internet sites.
Hotlinking Protection in Shared Hosting
It won't take more than a number of clicks to switch on the hotlink protection feature which we provide even if this is the first web hosting account that you use, because all of our shared hosting packages include a rather simple and user-friendly tool that will enable you to stop direct links to your content. The tool is an element of our advanced Hepsia CP, so it features the very same intuitive point-and-click interface. Once you log in to your account’s back office and visit the Hotlink Protection section, you will only need to select the domain or subdomain you want to secure from a drop-down list. If you would like to enable this function only for a certain website folder, you've got the option to do that. All websites with active hotlink protection will appear within this section and you can easily disable the service by selecting the checkbox beside the given site and clicking on the Delete button.
Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting
If you open a semi-dedicated server account and you discover that somebody is linking to your files without your consent, you can easily cut them off by activating the hotlink protection feature which we offer you. While the common technique of doing this is to set up an .htaccess file, we have got a special tool that is able to perform this automatically and you shall only need to select the Internet site in question and to choose whether our system should create the required file within the primary folder or inside a subfolder. The tool is a component of our custom Hepsia Control Panel and has the same user-friendly interface, so you'll be able to use it with no difficulties even when you have never used any website hosting service before. You are able to turn off the hotlink security function for any website/folder with a click from the same section.