Hotlinking is a commonly accepted Internet term for linking to another website’s images. Quite simply, if you develop an Internet 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 Internet site, they could simply put links to your Internet site. This way, every time a visitor opens their Internet site, the images shall be loaded from your account, hence stealing from your own monthly traffic quota, not to mention the copyright issues that can arise or that somebody could be trying to trick people into thinking that they're actually on your site. In rare instances, documents and other kinds of files can also be linked in the very same way. To prevent this from happening and to avoid such situations, you could activate hotlink protection for your Internet site.

Hotlinking Protection in Cloud Web Hosting

You can easily shield your content if you set up an .htaccess file within the website’s root folder, but in case you don't have previous experience, you should use our hotlink protection tool. The latter is included with all cloud web hosting plans which we offer and could be accessed using the in-house built Hepsia Control Panel. The protection could be activated in 2 easy steps - pick the domain or subdomain for the Internet site in question, then select if our system should create the .htaccess file in the primary folder or inside a subfolder and you will be all set. You don't need any computer programming skills or any experience with this kind of matters, because there shall be nothing else to do. If you wish to disable the protection at some point, you can see all of the Internet sites which are protected in the exact same section of the CP with a Delete button alongside each one of them.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting

If you have a semi-dedicated server account with us and you find out that someone has hotlinked any of your images, you should use the security tool which we have developed and integrated into our in-house built Hepsia hosting Control Panel. When you activate this feature, a server-generated image shall appear on the third-party site as a substitute for your actual images. You will only have to visit the Hotlink Protection section inside the CP and pick the domain or subdomain that your site uses from a convenient drop-down menu - it's as easy as that. If needed, you'll also have the option to switch on the function only for a particular subfolder and not for the website in its entirety. Deactivating the protection is just as effortless - return to the exact same section, check the box alongside the specific Internet site and then press the Delete button.