Hotlinking is a commonly accepted Internet term for linking to another website’s images. Basically, if you build a website, somebody else may want to use the images that you have and instead of downloading them from your website and then uploading them to their own Internet site, they could simply put links straight to your Internet site. In this way, when a visitor opens their Internet site, the images will be loaded from your account, hence stealing from your own monthly traffic quota, not to mention the copyright problems that may appear or that somebody could be trying to trick people into thinking that they are actually on your website. In rare instances, documents and other types of files could also be linked in the same exact way. To stop this from happening and to avoid this type of situations, you can permit hotlink protection for your site.
Hotlinking Protection in Web Hosting
It will not take more than a number of clicks to switch on the hotlink security feature that we provide even if this is the very first web hosting account that you use, because all our web hosting include a simple and easy-to-use tool that will enable you to prevent direct links to your content. The tool is part of our advanced Hepsia Control Panel, so it has the same easy-to-use point & click interface. After you log in to your account’s back office and navigate to the Hotlink Protection section, you'll simply have to choose the domain or subdomain that you'd like to protect from a drop-down list. If you want to activate this service only for a specific site folder, you've got the option to do that. All sites with enabled hotlink protection shall appear inside this section and you can easily turn off the service by selecting the checkbox next to the given website and clicking on the Delete button.
Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers
If you create a semi-dedicated server account and you discover that someone is linking to your files without your consent, you may easily cut them off by activating the hotlink security feature we offer. While the common method of doing this is to create an .htaccess file, we've got a special tool which can easily do this automatically and you'll only have to select the website in question and to choose whether our system should generate the necessary file in the main folder or within a subfolder. The tool is a component of our customized Hepsia CP and offers the same user-friendly interface, so you will be able to use it with no problems even in case you have never used any website hosting service before. You'll be able to disable the hotlink protection function for any website/folder with a mouse click from the exact same section.