Hotlinking is an expression that represents the inclusion of images on a given Internet site via direct links. When you have site A, for instance, and someone creates website B and wishes to include a few images from your Internet site, they could either save the images and then add them on their Internet site or they can simply place links on their Internet site to the images on yours. Subsequently, when a visitor opens website B, site B will steal traffic from your own site A, since the images shall load from your website hosting account. This method is typically used for documents and other sorts of files as well. If you'd like to prevent 3rd parties from stealing your content and from using your own website hosting account’s resources, you'll be able to limit their capability to use direct links to your files on their Internet sites.
Hotlinking Protection in Web Hosting
As our web hosting service provide a simple and handy hotlink protection tool, you'll be able to protect your content from appearing on third-party Internet sites with literally just 2 mouse clicks, even if you don't have much experience with such matters. The tool comes with the Hepsia hosting Control Panel and once you open it, you will just need to select the domain or subdomain that you want to protect. Optionally, you may also choose if the hotlink protection shall be active for the default domain root folder or only for a subfolder. You won't need to do anything else, since our system shall create an .htaccess file automatically inside the desired location and will include the necessary code in it. All websites with active hotlink protection will be listed in exactly the same section, so you may disable this service for each 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 should use the security tool that we have designed and included in our in-house built Hepsia hosting Control Panel. Once you enable this function, a server-generated image will appear on the third-party Internet site rather than your actual images. You will only need to check out the Hotlink Protection section within the Control Panel and select the domain or subdomain that your site uses from a practical drop-down menu - it is as easy as that. If necessary, you'll also have the option to enable the feature only for a particular subfolder and not for the website altogether. Deactivating the function is equally easy - get back to the exact same section, check the box beside the given Internet site and then press the Delete button.