Hotlinking is a commonly accepted Internet phrase for linking to another website’s images. Quite simply, if you develop an Internet site, somebody else may want to use the images you have and rather than downloading them from your Internet site and then uploading them to their own site, they could simply put links to your Internet site. In this way, every time a visitor opens their site, the images will be loaded from your account, consequently stealing from your own monthly traffic quota, along with the copyright problems which may present themselves or that someone may be trying to trick people into believing that they're actually on your Internet site. In rare occasions, documents and other kinds of files can also be linked in the exact same way. To stop this from happening and to avoid this kind of situations, you may enable hotlink protection for your website.
Hotlinking Protection in Website Hosting
It won't require more than a number of mouse clicks to activate the hotlink protection function which we offer you even if this is the 1st website hosting account you use, because all our Linux website hosting feature a rather simple and easy-to-use tool that will permit you to stop direct links to your content. The tool is an element of our advanced Hepsia Control Panel, so it offers the same easy-to-use point-and-click interface. Once you log in to your account’s back office and visit the Hotlink Protection section, you'll simply need to select the domain or subdomain that you'd like to secure from a drop-down list. If you wish to enable this service only for a specific site folder, you will have the option to do that. All sites with enabled hotlink protection will appear inside this section and you will be able to deactivate the service by selecting the checkbox next to the given Internet site and pressing the Delete button.
Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting
If you don't want others to use your images on their sites without your authorization, you may easily activate the hotlink protection feature, that's offered with all semi-dedicated server plans. Rather than generating an .htaccess file manually inside the site folder and writing some code inside it, which is the traditional way to deny direct linking to files, you could use an exceptionally simple tool, that we have integrated into the Hepsia Control Panel. From it, you'll only have to choose the Internet site that has to be secured and our system shall do the rest. Furthermore, you can make a decision if the .htaccess file should be created directly within the root folder or within a subfolder, when you want to switch on the hotlink protection function just for some content and not for the whole site. Disabling it is just as effortless - you'll only have to mark the checkbox next to the particular website and to click on the Delete button.