Hotlinking is an expression that identifies the inclusion of images on a given site via direct links. In case you have website A, for instance, and a person creates site B and wishes to include a number of images from your site, they can either save the images and then include them on their site or they can simply put links on their Internet site to the images on yours. As a result, each time a visitor opens website B, site B will steal traffic from your own site A, as the images will load straight from your hosting account. This approach is oftentimes used for documents and other types of files also. If you wish to prevent third 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 sites.

Hotlinking Protection in Web Hosting

You can easily shield your content if you generate an .htaccess file inside the website’s root folder, but in case that you don't have previous experience, you need to use our hotlink protection tool. The latter is provided with all web hosting package deals which we offer and can be accessed via the in-house built Hepsia CP. The protection may be activated in two simple steps - pick the domain or subdomain for the site in question, then choose if our system should set up the .htaccess file within the primary folder or inside a subfolder and you'll be ready. You don't need any computer programming capabilities or any experience with this kind of matters, as there shall be nothing else to do. If you would like to disable the protection eventually, you will be able to see all of the Internet sites which are protected in the same exact section of the CP with a Delete button next to each of them.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting

We offer an uncomplicated solution to shield your entire content and even if you are not quite tech-savvy, you'll be able to take advantage of it with several clicks. The standard way for you to turn on server-side hotlink security is to generate an .htaccess file and to include a couple of directives in it. With the tool that you'll find within the Hepsia CP, provided with all semi-dedicated server accounts, you'll simply need to select the website that you need to protect and our system will set up the .htaccess file for you, including all of the required content inside it. You can also use this option for only one folder rather than the whole Internet site - you just have to specify where the .htaccess file needs to be created. If you no longer want the hotlink security to be enabled, you may deactivate it with one mouse click through the very same section of your Control Panel.