Hotlinking is a largely accepted Internet expression for linking to another website’s images. Basically, if you create a website, somebody else may want to use the images that you have and rather than downloading them from your site and then uploading them to their site, they can simply put links straight to your site. That way, whenever a visitor opens their site, the images shall be loaded from your account, thus stealing from your own monthly traffic quota, in addition to the copyright problems which may appear or that someone can be trying to deceive people into believing that they are in fact on your website. In rare situations, documents and other types of files could also be linked in the very same way. To prevent this from happening and to avoid this type of situations, you can activate hotlink protection for your Internet site.
Hotlinking Protection in Hosting
It will not take more than a few mouse clicks to switch on the hotlink protection function which we offer even if this is the first web hosting account that you use, because all of our Linux hosting packages feature a quite simple and easy to work with tool that will enable you to prevent direct links to your content. The tool is a component of our advanced Hepsia CP, so it features the same easy-to-use point & click interface. When you log in to your account’s back office and go to the Hotlink Protection section, you'll only have to select the domain or subdomain that you'd like to protect from a drop-down list. If you'd like to enable this service only for a certain Internet site folder, you've got the option to do that. All websites with enabled hotlink protection shall appear inside this section and you can turn off the service by selecting the checkbox next to the given site and pressing the Delete button.
Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting
We provide a simple solution to secure your content and even if you are not quite tech-savvy, you can benefit from it with a couple of mouse clicks. The common technique to activate server-side hotlink protection is to set up an .htaccess file and to include a couple of directives in it. With the tool which you'll find within the Hepsia Control Panel, which comes with all semi-dedicated server accounts, you'll simply need to choose the website which you need to secure and our system will set up the .htaccess file for you, adding all of the necessary content inside it. You may also use this feature for only one folder instead of the entire site - you just have to specify where the .htaccess file needs to be created. If you no longer want the hotlink protection to be enabled, you'll be able to deactivate it with one click through the same section of your Control Panel.