Hotlinking is a term that describes the inclusion of images on a particular site through direct links. In case you have site A, for instance, and someone creates site B and wishes to include a number of images from your Internet site, they're able to either save the images and then include them on their site or they could simply put links on their site to the images on yours. Consequently, whenever a visitor opens site B, site B will steal traffic from your own Internet site A, since the images shall load from your website hosting account. This approach is oftentimes used for documents and other types of files also. If you want to prevent 3rd parties from stealing your content and from using your own website hosting account’s resources, you could limit their ability to use direct links to your files on their sites.
Hotlinking Protection in Website Hosting
Since our Linux website hosting plans feature a simple and convenient hotlink protection tool, you will be able to protect your content from displaying on third-party websites with literally just two mouse clicks, even if you do not have much experience with this type of matters. The tool is available in the Hepsia hosting CP and once you open it, you will only need to choose the domain or subdomain that you would like to protect. In addition, you could also select if the hotlink protection will be enabled for the default domain root folder or just for a subfolder. You'll not have to do anything else, because our system shall create an .htaccess file automatically inside the preferred location and will add the necessary code in it. All websites with enabled hotlink protection will be listed inside the exact same section, so that you can disable this service for any of them with just a click.
Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers
If you have a semi-dedicated server account with our company and you find out that someone has hotlinked any of your images, you can use the protection tool which we have created and integrated into our in-house built Hepsia hosting Control Panel. Whenever you enable this function, a server-generated image shall appear on the third-party site instead of your real images. You'll only need to visit the Hotlink Protection section within the Control Panel and choose the domain or subdomain that your Internet site uses from a practical drop-down menu - it's as elementary as that. If needed, you'll also have the option to activate the feature for a specific subfolder and not for the website in general. Deactivating the function is equally simple - get back to the very same section, check the box alongside the given website and then click on the Delete button.