Hotlinking is an expression that describes the addition of images on a given site via direct links. When you have site A, for instance, and someone creates website B and wants to add a couple of images from your site, they could either save the images and then include them on their Internet site or they may simply place links on their website to the images on yours. Subsequently, every time a visitor opens website B, site B will steal traffic from your own site A, because the images shall load straight from your website hosting account. This technique is usually used for documents and other sorts of files as well. If you would like to prevent third 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 sites.

Hotlinking Protection in Web Hosting

There's a simple way to avoid the hotlinking of your images via an .htaccess file within the website’s root directory, but if you aren't very tech-savvy, we also offer a very intuitive tool that will allow you to enable the protection with a few mouse clicks and without typing any code. The tool could be accessed via the Hepsia CP, provided with all our web hosting and the only two things which you'll have to pick are a domain/subdomain from a drop-down menu and whether the protection must be activated for the main website folder or for some subfolder. Our system will do the rest, so you will not have to do anything else personally on your end. If you choose to turn off the hotlink protection option sometime, you will just need to come back to the exact same section, to mark the checkbox beside it and to click on the Delete button.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers

If you have a semi-dedicated server account with us and you notice that someone has hotlinked any of your images, you can use the security tool we have designed and incorporated into our in-house built Hepsia hosting Control Panel. Once you enable this function, a server-generated image shall appear on the third-party website as a substitute for your actual images. You will only have to check out the Hotlink Protection section within the Control Panel and select the domain or subdomain that your site uses from a handy drop-down menu - it's as simple as that. When necessary, you'll also have the option to switch on the feature only for a particular subfolder and not for the website altogether. Deactivating the function is as effortless - return to the very same section, check the box beside the specific site and then press the Delete button.