Hotlinking is a largely accepted Internet phrase for linking to another website’s images. Quite simply, if you build a site, some other person may want to use the images you have and instead of downloading them from your Internet site and then uploading them to their own Internet site, they can simply put links directly to your site. In this way, when a visitor opens their website, the images will be loaded from your account, hence stealing from your own monthly traffic quota, not to mention the copyright issues which could arise or that somebody could be trying to trick people into thinking that they're in fact on your website. In rare occasions, documents and other sorts of files can also be linked in the very same way. To prevent this from happening and to avoid this kind of situations, you can permit hotlink protection for your Internet site.
Hotlinking Protection in Shared Hosting
Since our Linux shared hosting packages include a simple and handy hotlink protection tool, you shall be able to shield your content from showing on third-party websites with literally only two clicks, even if you don't have a lot of experience with this kind of matters. The tool is available in the Hepsia hosting Control Panel and when you open it, you'll only need to select the domain or subdomain that you want to protect. Optionally, you can 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, due to the fact that our system will create an .htaccess file automatically within the desired location and shall include the needed code within it. All sites with enabled hotlink protection will be listed in exactly the same section, so you could disable this service for any of them with just a click.
Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting
If you have a semi-dedicated server account with our company and you find out that somebody has hotlinked any of your images, you may use the protection tool we've created and integrated into our in-house built Hepsia hosting CP. Whenever you activate this feature, a server-generated image shall appear on the third-party website in place of your actual images. You'll only need to visit the Hotlink Protection section in the Control Panel and pick the domain or subdomain that your website uses from a practical drop-down menu - it is as simple as that. If necessary, you will also have the option to enable the feature only for a specific subfolder and not for the website in general. Deactivating the feature is as effortless - get back to the exact same section, check the box beside the specific site and then click on the Delete button.