Hotlinking is a largely accepted Internet phrase for linking to another website’s images. Quite simply, if you build a website, someone else may want to use the images you have and instead of downloading them from your website and then uploading them to their website, they may simply put links to your Internet site. This way, every time a visitor opens their website, the images will be loaded from your account, consequently stealing from your own monthly traffic quota, along with the copyright issues that could develop or that somebody may be trying to trick people into thinking that they're in fact on your Internet site. In rare occasions, documents and other sorts of files may also be linked in the same exact way. To prevent this from happening and to avoid this sort of situations, you could permit hotlink protection for your website.

Hotlinking Protection in Cloud Hosting

You can easily shield your content if you generate an .htaccess file within the website’s root folder, but in case you do not have previous experience, you should use our hotlink protection tool. The latter comes with all cloud hosting package deals which we offer and can be accessed through the in-house built Hepsia Control Panel. The protection may be enabled in two basic steps - select the domain or subdomain for the site in question, then select if our system should create the .htaccess file inside the main folder or inside a subfolder and you'll be good to go. You do not need any programming expertise or any experience with this sort of matters, because there shall be nothing else to do. If you'd like to disable the protection eventually, you could see all of the websites which are protected inside the very same section of the CP with a Delete button alongside each one of them.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers

If you have a semi-dedicated server account with us and you discover that someone has hotlinked any of your images, you may use the protection tool we've created and integrated into our in-house built Hepsia hosting Control Panel. Once you activate this option, a server-generated image will appear on the third-party site as a substitute for your actual images. You will only have to check out the Hotlink Protection section in the Control Panel and choose the domain or subdomain that your website uses from a handy drop-down menu - it is as basic as that. When necessary, you'll also have the option to switch on the feature just for a specific subfolder and not for the website altogether. Deactivating the feature is just as effortless - go back to the same section, check the box beside the particular site and then press the Delete button.