Hotlinking is a term which identifies the addition of images on a particular site by using direct links. If you have website A, for instance, and an individual creates site B and wants to include a couple of images from your website, they could either save the images and then add them on their website or they can simply put links on their Internet site to the images on yours. Thus, every time a visitor opens site B, site B will steal traffic from your own Internet site A, since the images shall load from your website hosting account. This method is sometimes used for documents and other kinds of files also. If you'd like to prevent third parties from stealing your content and from using your own website hosting account’s resources, you could restrict their capability to use direct links to your files on their Internet sites.

Hotlinking Protection in Shared Web Hosting

There's a way of avoiding the hotlinking of your images by using an .htaccess file inside the website’s root directory, but if you aren't very tech-savvy, we furthermore give you a very easy-to-use tool that will permit you to activate the protection with a couple of mouse clicks and without inputting any code. The tool may be accessed through the Hepsia CP, offered with all our shared web hosting and the only two things which you'll have to pick are a domain/subdomain from a drop-down menu and if the protection should be activated for the main website folder or for some subfolder. Our system shall do the rest, so you won't have to do anything else by hand on your end. If you want to turn off the hotlink protection option eventually, you will just need to revisit the same section, to mark the checkbox next to it and to press the Delete button.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers

If you have a semi-dedicated server account with us and you find out that someone has hotlinked any of your images, you can use the protection tool we've developed and included in our in-house built Hepsia hosting Control Panel. Once you activate this feature, a server-generated image shall appear on the third-party Internet site in place of your real images. You will only have to visit the Hotlink Protection section inside the CP and pick the domain or subdomain which your website uses from a handy drop-down menu - it is as basic as that. If necessary, you shall also have the option to enable the function only for a specific subfolder and not for the website in general. Deactivating the protection is as simple - get back to the exact same section, check the box beside the specific site and then press the Delete button.