Hotlinking is a commonly accepted Internet phrase for linking to another website’s images. Quite simply, if you create a website, some other person may want to use the images you have and instead of downloading them from your site and then uploading them to their own Internet site, they may simply put links directly to your Internet site. In this way, when a visitor opens their website, the images shall be loaded from your account, hence stealing from your own monthly traffic quota, not to mention the copyright issues which may develop or that somebody could be trying to deceive people into thinking that they are actually on your website. In rare occasions, documents and other kinds of files may also be linked in the very same way. To prevent this from happening and to avoid such situations, you can enable hotlink protection for your site.

Hotlinking Protection in Web Hosting

It won't take more than a few clicks to activate the hotlink protection feature that we offer even if this is the first hosting account you use, as all of our Linux web hosting packages feature a simple and easy-to-use tool that will allow you to stop direct links to your content. The tool is an element of our innovative Hepsia CP, so it has the exact same easy-to-use point-and-click interface. When you log in to your account’s back office and navigate to the Hotlink Protection section, you will only need to select the domain or subdomain that you'd like to protect from a drop-down list. If you would like to switch on this feature only for a specific Internet site folder, you will have the option to do that. All sites with active hotlink protection shall appear in this section and you could disable 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 shield your content and even if you are not quite tech-savvy, you could take full advantage of it with a few clicks. The standard approach to activate server-side hotlink protection is to set up an .htaccess file and to add a couple of directives in it. With the tool which you'll discover inside the Hepsia CP, supplied with all of the semi-dedicated server accounts, you will only have to pick the site that you need to protect and our system shall create the .htaccess file for you, adding all the essential content inside it. You can even use this feature for only one folder as opposed to the entire site - you just need to specify where the .htaccess file should be set up. If you no longer need the hotlink protection to be active, you can deactivate it with just one click via the same exact section of your CP.