Hotlinking is a term that describes the inclusion of images on a particular Internet site via direct links. If you have site A, for example, and an individual creates site B and wants to include a number of images from your Internet site, they could either save the images and then add them on their Internet site or they can simply put links on their site to the images on yours. As a result, each time a visitor opens website B, site B will steal traffic from your own website A, as the images will load directly from your web hosting account. This approach is typically used for documents and other types of files too. If you'd like to prevent 3rd parties from stealing your content and from using your own hosting account’s resources, you are able to restrict their ability to use direct links to your files on their sites.

Hotlinking Protection in Shared Hosting

It will not take more than several clicks to switch on the hotlink security feature which we offer even if this is the very first hosting account which you use, since all of our shared hosting feature a rather simple and user-friendly tool that will permit you to stop direct links to your content. The tool is an element of our revolutionary Hepsia Control Panel, so it has the same exact intuitive point-and-click interface. After you log in to your account’s back office and navigate to the Hotlink Protection section, you'll simply have to pick the domain or subdomain that you would like to protect from a drop-down list. If you want to switch on this feature only for a specific website folder, you will have the option to do that. All Internet sites with active hotlink protection will appear in this section and you can disable the service by selecting the checkbox next to the given Internet site and clicking on the Delete button.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers

If you start a semi-dedicated server account and you find out that someone is linking to your files without your approval, you can easily cut them off by enabling the hotlink protection function we provide. While the conventional way to do this is to create an .htaccess file, we've got a special tool that can easily do this automatically and you'll only need to choose the site in question and to decide whether our system should create the required file in the primary folder or within a subfolder. The tool is an element of our customized Hepsia CP and has the same user-friendly interface, so you will be able to use it without difficulties even in case you have never used any website hosting service before. You'll be able to turn off the hotlink security feature for any website/folder with a mouse click through exactly the same section.