Hotlinking is a term which represents the inclusion of images on a particular website by using direct links. In case you have website A, for instance, and an individual creates website B and wishes to add a few images from your website, they can either save the images and then include them on their Internet site or they could simply place links on their Internet site to the images on yours. As a result, each time a visitor opens site B, site B will steal traffic from your own site A, as the images shall load straight from your hosting account. This approach is usually used for documents and other sorts of files as well. If you'd like to prevent 3rd parties from stealing your content and from using your own web hosting account’s resources, you'll be able to restrict their ability to use direct links to your files on their websites.

Hotlinking Protection in Cloud Hosting

There's a simple way to avoid the hotlinking of your images through an .htaccess file within the website’s root directory, but if you are not very tech-savvy, we also offer a very easy-to-work-with tool that shall permit you to enable the protection with several clicks and without inputting any code. The tool could be accessed via the Hepsia Control Panel, included with all our cloud plans and the only two things that you'll need to choose are a domain/subdomain from a drop-down menu and whether the protection must be activated for the main site folder or for some subfolder. Our system shall do the rest, so you won't have to do anything else personally on your end. If you wish to deactivate the hotlink protection option at some point, you'll just have to revisit exactly the same section, to mark the checkbox beside it and to press the Delete button.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers

We offer a simple solution to shield your entire content and even if you aren't quite tech-savvy, you are able to benefit from it with just a few mouse clicks. The standard technique to turn on server-side hotlink security is to generate an .htaccess file and to include a couple of directives in it. With the tool that you'll discover in the Hepsia Control Panel, supplied with all semi-dedicated server accounts, you will simply have to pick the site which you intend to protect and our system shall set up the .htaccess file for you, adding all of the needed content within it. You can also use this feature for only one folder instead of the entire site - you just need to specify where the .htaccess file needs to be created. If you no longer require the hotlink security to be active, you'll be able to deactivate it with just one mouse click from the same exact section of your CP.