Hotlinking is an expression which represents the addition of images on a particular website through the use of direct links. When you have site A, for instance, and someone creates website B and wants to include a few images from your Internet site, they can either save the images and then add them on their website or they can simply put links on their site to the images on yours. As a result, when a visitor opens site B, site B will steal traffic from your own website A, because the images will load directly from your hosting account. This technique is sometimes used for documents and other kinds of files too. If you would like to prevent 3rd parties from stealing your content and from using your own hosting account’s resources, you'll be able to limit their capability to use direct links to your files on their sites.

Hotlinking Protection in Shared Hosting

There is a way to avoid the hotlinking of your images through an .htaccess file inside the website’s root directory, but if you aren't very tech-savvy, we also provide a very easy-to-work-with tool that shall permit you to activate the protection with a couple of clicks and without typing any code. The tool may be accessed via the Hepsia CP, offered with all our Linux shared packages and the only 2 things which you'll need to pick are a domain/subdomain from a drop-down menu and if the protection has to be enabled for the main Internet site folder or for some subfolder. Our system shall do the rest, so you shall not need to do anything else manually on your end. If you choose to turn off the hotlink protection option at one point, you'll just need to come back to the exact same section, to mark the checkbox at the side of it and to press the Delete button.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting

If you have a semi-dedicated server account with our company and you discover that another person has hotlinked any of your images, you should use the security tool we have created and included in our in-house built Hepsia hosting CP. As soon as you activate this option, a server-generated image shall appear on the third-party website as a substitute for your actual images. You will only need to go to the Hotlink Protection section in the CP and choose the domain or subdomain that your site uses from a practical drop-down menu - it is as easy as that. If necessary, you will also have the option to switch on the function for a particular subfolder and not for the website altogether. Deactivating the protection is as simple - get back to the same section, check the box next to the specific website and then click on the Delete button.