Hotlinking is a term which identifies the inclusion of images on a given site via direct links. In case you have site A, for example, and somebody creates website B and wishes to include a few images from your website, they are able to either save the images and then include them on their Internet site or they may simply place links on their site to the images on yours. Subsequently, whenever a visitor opens website B, site B will steal traffic from your own website A, since the images will load directly from your website hosting account. This process is usually used for documents and other sorts of files too. If you want to prevent 3rd parties from stealing your content and from using your own website hosting account’s resources, you could limit their capability to use direct links to your files on their Internet sites.

Hotlinking Protection in Shared Hosting

It will not require more than a couple of clicks to enable the hotlink security feature which we offer even if this is the very first website hosting account that you use, due to the fact that all of our shared hosting feature a simple and easy to work with tool that will allow you to stop direct links to your content. The tool is part of our advanced Hepsia Control Panel, so it features the same easy-to-use point-and-click interface. As soon as you log in to your account’s back office and go to the Hotlink Protection section, you will only need to pick the domain or subdomain that you want to secure from a drop-down list. If you wish to enable this function only for a certain website folder, you will have the option to do that. All websites with enabled hotlink protection shall appear in this section and you can easily turn off the service by selecting the checkbox next to the given Internet site and clicking on the Delete button.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting

If you do not want others to use your images on their Internet sites without your consent, you can easily activate the hotlink protection function, that's offered with all semi-dedicated server plans. Instead of creating an .htaccess file by hand inside the website folder and writing some code in it, which is the conventional way to deny direct linking to files, you may use a very simple tool, that we've incorporated into the Hepsia Control Panel. Using it, you will only need to pick the website that needs to be protected and our system shall do the rest. Moreover, you can choose if the .htaccess file should be set up directly in the root folder or in a subfolder, if you would like to enable the hotlink protection feature just for some content and not for the whole website. Deactivating it is just as simple - you'll only need to mark the checkbox next to the particular Internet site and to click on the Delete button.