Hotlinking is an expression which refers to the addition of images on a given Internet site via direct links. When you have site A, for example, and someone creates website B and wants to include a few images from your website, they are able to either save the images and then include them on their website or they could simply put links on their site to the images on yours. Subsequently, each time a visitor opens site B, site B will steal traffic from your own site A, because the images will load straight from your web hosting account. This approach is oftentimes used for documents and other kinds of files also. If you would like to prevent 3rd parties from stealing your content and from using your own web hosting account’s resources, you are able to restrict their capability to use direct links to your files on their sites.

Hotlinking Protection in Cloud Hosting

You can easily shield your content if you set up an .htaccess file within the website’s root folder, but in case you do not have previous experience, you should use our hotlink protection tool. The latter is provided with all cloud hosting package deals which we offer and could be accessed from the in-house built Hepsia CP. The protection can be turned on in two simple steps - pick the domain or subdomain for the site in question, then choose if our system should set up the .htaccess file inside the primary folder or inside a subfolder and you'll be all set. You don't require any computer programming expertise or any experience with this sort of matters, due to the fact that there shall be nothing else to do. If you'd like to remove the protection at some point, you will be able to see all the Internet sites that are protected within the same exact section of the CP with a Delete button beside each of them.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting

If you have a semi-dedicated server account with us and you notice that another person has hotlinked any of your images, you may use the protection tool we've designed and included in our in-house built Hepsia hosting CP. As soon as you switch on this feature, a server-generated image will appear on the third-party Internet site in place of your actual images. You'll only have to navigate to the Hotlink Protection section within the CP and select the domain or subdomain that your website uses from a handy drop-down menu - it's as elementary as that. If needed, you shall also have the option to enable the function only for a particular subfolder and not for the website altogether. Deactivating the function is just as simple - return to exactly the same section, check the box alongside the given site and then press the Delete button.