Hotlinking is an expression that identifies the addition of images on a given website by using direct links. If you have site A, for example, and a person creates website B and wants to include a few images from your website, they could either save the images and then add them on their website or they could simply place links on their website to the images on yours. Thus, when a visitor opens Internet site B, site B will steal traffic from your own website A, because the images will load from your website hosting account. This method is typically used for documents and other kinds of files also. If you'd like to prevent 3rd parties from stealing your content and from using your own web hosting account’s resources, you can restrict their capability to use direct links to your files on their websites.

Hotlinking Protection in Cloud Hosting

Because our Linux cloud hosting provide a simple and handy hotlink protection tool, you shall be able to protect your content from appearing on third-party sites with literally only a couple of clicks, even if you don't have very much experience with such matters. The tool is available in the Hepsia hosting CP and as soon as you open it, you will only need to choose the domain or subdomain which you want to protect. Furthermore, you may also select if the hotlink protection will be enabled for the default domain root folder or only for a subfolder. You will not need to do anything else, since our system will create an .htaccess file automatically within the desired location and shall add the needed code within it. All websites with active hotlink protection will be listed within exactly the same section, so you can disable this service for any of them with a click.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting

If you have a semi-dedicated server account with our company and you find out that another person has hotlinked any of your images, you can use the security tool we have designed and integrated into our in-house built Hepsia hosting CP. Whenever you activate this function, a server-generated image will appear on the third-party site instead of your real images. You will only have to check out the Hotlink Protection section in the Control Panel and select the domain or subdomain which your Internet site uses from a handy drop-down menu - it's as simple as that. If required, you'll also have the option to switch on the function only for a specific subfolder and not for the website altogether. Deactivating the protection is equally simple - go back to exactly the same section, check the box next to the specific Internet site and then click on the Delete button.