Hotlinking is an expression which represents the inclusion of images on a particular site using direct links. If you have website A, for instance, and somebody creates website B and wants to add a number of images from your site, they could either save the images and then include them on their Internet site or they may simply place links on their website to the images on yours. Subsequently, whenever a visitor opens Internet site B, site B will steal traffic from your own Internet site A, because the images shall load directly from your website hosting account. This process is oftentimes used for documents and other kinds of files also. If you want to prevent 3rd parties from stealing your content and from using your own hosting account’s resources, you can limit their capability to use direct links to your files on their sites.

Hotlinking Protection in Shared Hosting

As our shared hosting feature a simple and handy hotlink protection tool, you will be able to secure your content from displaying on third-party websites with literally just two clicks, even if you do not have a lot of experience with such matters. The tool is included with the Hepsia hosting Control Panel and when you open it, you will just have to select the domain or subdomain that you want to protect. Additionally, you could also choose if the hotlink protection shall be active for the default domain root folder or only for a subfolder. You'll not have to do anything else, due to the fact that our system will create an .htaccess file automatically inside the needed location and will include the necessary code inside it. All Internet websites with active hotlink protection will be listed inside the exact same section, so that you can disable this service for any of them with a mouse click.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers

If you have a semi-dedicated server account with our company and you discover that another person has hotlinked any of your images, you can use the security tool we've created and integrated into our in-house built Hepsia hosting Control Panel. When you switch on this option, a server-generated image shall appear on the third-party website as a substitute for your real images. You'll only need to visit the Hotlink Protection section in the CP and choose the domain or subdomain that your website uses from a handy drop-down menu - it's as easy as that. If necessary, you'll also have the option to activate the function just for a specific subfolder and not for the website in general. Deactivating the function is equally simple - go back to exactly the same section, check the box beside the particular site and then click on the Delete button.