Hotlinking is an expression that represents the inclusion of images on a given website using direct links. In case you have site A, for instance, and someone creates site B and wants to include a number of images from your website, they can either save the images and then add them on their Internet site or they can simply place links on their Internet site to the images on yours. Thus, each time a visitor opens Internet site B, site B will steal traffic from your own site A, as the images shall load directly from your hosting account. This approach is oftentimes used for documents and other types of files also. If you'd 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 ability to use direct links to your files on their websites.

Hotlinking Protection in Cloud Hosting

It won't require more than a number of clicks to enable the hotlink security feature that we provide even if this is the very first hosting account which you use, because all our Linux cloud hosting include a simple and easy-to-use tool that will enable you to stop direct links to your content. The tool is part of our advanced Hepsia Control Panel, so it provides the same exact intuitive point-and-click interface. Once you log in to your account’s back office and navigate to the Hotlink Protection section, you will simply need to choose the domain or subdomain that you want to protect from a drop-down list. If you want to activate this service only for a specific Internet site folder, you will have the option to do that. All websites with enabled hotlink protection will appear inside this section and you could deactivate the service by selecting the checkbox alongside the given site and pressing the Delete button.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting

If you do not want other people to use your images on their websites without your consent, you can easily switch on the hotlink protection function, that's supplied with all semi-dedicated server plans. Instead of generating an .htaccess file by hand within the website folder and writing some code inside it, which is the conventional method to deny direct linking to files, you could use an incredibly simple tool, which we've included in the Hepsia CP. By using it, you'll only have to choose the site that has to be protected and our system will do the rest. Additionally, you can determine if the .htaccess file will be created directly within the root folder or in a subfolder, if you want to enable the hotlink protection feature just for some content and not for the entire Internet site. Deactivating it is just as fast - you'll only have to mark the checkbox next to the particular site and to click on the Delete button.