Hotlinking is a largely accepted Internet expression for linking to another website’s images. Basically, if you build an Internet site, some other person may want to use the images that you have and instead of downloading them from your site and then uploading them to their Internet site, they may simply put links straight to your website. In this way, each time a visitor opens their site, the images shall be loaded from your account, hence stealing from your own monthly traffic quota, not to mention the copyright issues that could appear or that somebody may be trying to trick people into believing that they're in fact on your website. In rare occasions, documents and other sorts of files can also be linked in the very same way. To stop this from happening and to avoid such situations, you may enable hotlink protection for your site.

Hotlinking Protection in Hosting

Since our Linux hosting feature a simple and handy hotlink protection tool, you will be able to secure your content from appearing on third-party Internet sites with literally only a couple of clicks, even if you do not have much experience with this kind of matters. The tool is available in the Hepsia hosting Control Panel and as soon as you open it, you'll just have to choose the domain or subdomain you want to protect. In addition, you may also choose if the hotlink protection shall be active for the default domain root folder or just for a subfolder. You'll not have to do anything else, because our system shall create an .htaccess file automatically inside the preferred location and shall include the needed code inside it. All websites with active hotlink protection will be listed inside the same section, so you could disable this service for any of them with just a mouse click.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers

If you have a semi-dedicated server account with us and you notice that someone has hotlinked any of your images, you may use the security tool that we have designed and integrated into our in-house built Hepsia hosting Control Panel. As soon as you switch on this option, a server-generated image shall appear on the third-party Internet site instead of your real images. You'll only have to check out the Hotlink Protection section in the Control Panel and choose the domain or subdomain which your Internet site uses from a practical drop-down menu - it is as basic as that. When necessary, you'll also have the option to enable the feature just for a specific subfolder and not for the website altogether. Deactivating the feature is just as easy - return to the exact same section, check the box alongside the particular website and then click on the Delete button.