Hotlinking is an expression which identifies the addition of images on a particular website using direct links. When you have website A, for example, and a person creates site B and wishes to add a number of images from your website, they can either save the images and then include them on their site or they may simply place links on their Internet site to the images on yours. Thus, every time a visitor opens website B, site B will steal traffic from your own website A, because the images shall load from your website hosting account. This approach is typically used for documents and other sorts of files also. If you want to prevent third parties from stealing your content and from using your own web hosting account’s resources, you could limit their ability to use direct links to your files on their sites.
Hotlinking Protection in Hosting
There is a way of preventing the hotlinking of your images via an .htaccess file within the website’s root directory, but if you are not very tech-savvy, we furthermore offer a very user-friendly tool that will allow you to enable the protection with just a few clicks and without inputting any code. The tool can be accessed from the Hepsia CP, included with all our hosting and the only two things which you will need to choose are a domain/subdomain from a drop-down menu and if the protection must be enabled for the main site folder or for some subfolder. Our system will do the rest, so you shall not have to do anything else personally on your end. If you decide to deactivate the hotlink protection option eventually, you will just need to revisit the same section, to mark the checkbox next to it and to press the Delete button.
Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting
We offer a simple solution to secure your content and even if you aren't really tech-savvy, you can benefit from it with a few clicks. The standard technique to activate server-side hotlink security is to generate an .htaccess file and to include a few directives inside it. With the tool that you will find in the Hepsia CP, supplied with all semi-dedicated server accounts, you will only need to choose the website that you need to secure and our system will create the .htaccess file for you, adding all the necessary content within it. You can even use this option for just one folder instead of the entire website - 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 can deactivate it with one click from the same exact section of your CP.