Hotlinking is a widely accepted Internet term for linking to another website’s images. In other words, if you build a site, another person may want to use the images that you have and instead of downloading them from your website and then uploading them to their own Internet site, they could simply put links straight to your Internet site. This way, each time a visitor opens their Internet site, the images shall be loaded from your account, hence stealing from your own monthly traffic quota, in addition to the copyright problems which may arise or that somebody can be trying to trick people into believing that they are in fact on your website. In rare occasions, documents and other sorts of files could also be linked in the same exact way. To stop this from happening and to avoid this type of situations, you may activate hotlink protection for your website.
Hotlinking Protection in Shared Hosting
It won't require more than a few clicks to switch on the hotlink security function we offer you even if this is the 1st web hosting account you use, due to the fact that all of our shared plans come with a simple and easy to work with tool that will enable you to stop direct links to your content. The tool is an element of our revolutionary Hepsia Control Panel, so it provides the exact same intuitive point-and-click interface. When you log in to your account’s back office and visit the Hotlink Protection section, you will only have to choose the domain or subdomain that you'd like to protect from a drop-down list. If you'd like to enable this function only for a specific website folder, you've got the option to do that. All sites with active hotlink protection shall appear within this section and you could disable the service by selecting the checkbox next to the given site and clicking on the Delete button.
Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers
We offer an effective solution to shield your content and even if you are not really tech-savvy, you could take advantage of it with several clicks. The standard way to turn on server-side hotlink protection is to generate an .htaccess file and to include a couple of directives in it. With the tool which you'll discover inside the Hepsia Control Panel, which comes with all semi-dedicated server accounts, you'll simply need to pick the website which you would like to secure and our system shall set up the .htaccess file for you, including all of the needed content in it. You could also use this feature for only one folder as opposed to the whole website - you just need to specify where the .htaccess file needs to be set up. If you no longer need the hotlink protection to be switched on, you may disable it with a single mouse click through the exact same section of your Control Panel.