Hotlinking is an expression which refers to the inclusion of images on a given site through the use of direct links. If you have site A, for instance, and somebody creates website B and wishes to add a number of images from your site, they're able to either save the images and then add them on their website or they may simply put links on their site to the images on yours. Subsequently, when a visitor opens Internet site B, site B will steal traffic from your own Internet site A, since the images shall load straight from your website hosting account. This technique is usually used for documents and other types of files too. If you'd like to prevent third parties from stealing your content and from using your own hosting account’s resources, you'll be able to restrict their ability to use direct links to your files on their websites.
Hotlinking Protection in Shared Hosting
There's a method for preventing the hotlinking of your images through an .htaccess file within the website’s root directory, but if you are not very tech-savvy, we additionally offer a very easy-to-work-with tool that will permit you to enable the protection with a couple of clicks and without writing any code. The tool can be accessed via the Hepsia Control Panel, included with all our shared hosting and the only 2 things which you'll need to pick are a domain/subdomain from a drop-down menu and if the protection must be enabled for the main Internet site folder or for some subfolder. Our system will do the rest, so you shall not have to do anything else personally on your end. If you choose to deactivate the hotlink protection option at one point, you'll just need to go back to exactly the same section, to mark the checkbox beside it and to press the Delete button.
Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers
If you have a semi-dedicated server account with us and you find out that somebody has hotlinked any of your images, you should use the security tool that we have designed and integrated into our in-house built Hepsia hosting Control Panel. Whenever you switch on this option, a server-generated image shall appear on the third-party site as a substitute for your real images. You will only have to navigate to the Hotlink Protection section in the Control Panel and choose the domain or subdomain which your Internet site uses from a handy drop-down menu - it is as simple as that. If needed, you will also have the option to switch on the feature for a particular subfolder and not for the website in general. Deactivating the function is as effortless - return to the exact same section, check the box next to the particular website and then click on the Delete button.