Hotlinking is an expression that describes the inclusion of images on a particular site using direct links. In case you have site A, for instance, and somebody creates site B and wishes to include a couple of images from your website, they could either save the images and then add them on their website or they may simply place links on their website to the images on yours. Subsequently, whenever a visitor opens website B, site B will steal traffic from your own Internet site A, since the images will load directly from your website hosting account. This method is typically used for documents and other kinds of files as well. If you would like to prevent third parties from stealing your content and from using your own hosting account’s resources, you can limit their ability to use direct links to your files on their websites.

Hotlinking Protection in Cloud Web Hosting

You can easily secure your content if you set up an .htaccess file inside the website’s root folder, but if you don't have previous experience, you can use our hotlink protection tool. The latter comes with all cloud web hosting package deals we offer and could be accessed through the in-house built Hepsia CP. The protection may be turned on in two simple steps - select the domain or subdomain for the Internet site in question, then pick if our system should create the .htaccess file within the primary folder or within a subfolder and you will be good to go. You do not need any programming expertise or any experience with this type of matters, because there will be nothing else to do. If you want to turn off the protection eventually, you could see all the sites which are protected inside the same exact section of the CP with a Delete button alongside each one of them.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting

If you start 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 enabling the hotlink security function that we provide. While the conventional method of doing this is to set up an .htaccess file, we have a special tool that can execute this automatically and you shall only have to choose the Internet site in question and to determine whether our system should set up the needed file within the main folder or inside a subfolder. The tool is a component of our custom made Hepsia Control Panel and has the exact same user-friendly interface, so you will be able to use it without complications even in case you have never used any hosting service before. You are able to switch off the hotlink protection function for any website/folder with a click from the same section.