Hotlinking is a term that refers to the inclusion of images on a particular Internet site via direct links. If you have website A, for example, and somebody creates website B and wants to include a few images from your Internet site, they are able to either save the images and then include them on their site or they can simply place links on their site to the images on yours. Subsequently, each time a visitor opens website B, site B will steal traffic from your own site A, as the images shall load directly from your website hosting account. This approach is sometimes used for documents and other types of files also. If you would like to prevent 3rd parties from stealing your content and from using your own hosting account’s resources, you are able to restrict their capability to use direct links to your files on their websites.

Hotlinking Protection in Web Hosting

Due to the fact that our Linux web hosting packages include a simple and handy hotlink protection tool, you'll be able to shield your content from displaying on third-party Internet sites with literally only a couple of mouse clicks, even if you don't have much experience with such matters. The tool is available in the Hepsia hosting Control Panel and as soon as you open it, you'll only have to select the domain or subdomain that you'd like to protect. Furthermore, you could also pick if the hotlink protection will be enabled for the default domain root folder or just for a subfolder. You won't have to do anything else, as our system shall create an .htaccess file automatically within the preferred location and shall include the necessary code within it. All Internet websites with active hotlink protection shall be listed in the same section, so you can disable this service for each of them with a click.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting

If you have a semi-dedicated server account with us and you find out that somebody has hotlinked any of your images, you may use the protection tool we've created and incorporated into our in-house built Hepsia hosting CP. Once you switch on this function, a server-generated image shall appear on the third-party Internet site instead of your real images. You will only have to visit the Hotlink Protection section within the CP and choose the domain or subdomain which your website uses from a practical drop-down menu - it's as basic as that. If needed, you'll also have the option to activate the function only for a specific subfolder and not for the website altogether. Deactivating the function is equally easy - go back to exactly the same section, check the box beside the particular site and then press the Delete button.