Hotlinking is a term that represents the inclusion of images on a given website via direct links. If you have site A, for example, and somebody creates site B and wishes to add a number of images from your website, they can either save the images and then include them on their site or they could simply place links on their Internet site to the images on yours. Subsequently, each time a visitor opens website B, site B will steal traffic from your own Internet site A, since the images will load from your web hosting account. This process is sometimes used for documents and other kinds of files also. If you would like to prevent 3rd parties from stealing your content and from using your own web hosting account’s resources, you are able to restrict their capability to use direct links to your files on their websites.

Hotlinking Protection in Shared Hosting

You can easily shield your content if you create an .htaccess file inside the website’s root folder, but in case you don't have previous experience, you should use our hotlink protection tool. The latter is supplied with all shared hosting plans that we offer and can be accessed via the in-house built Hepsia CP. The protection can be enabled in two simple steps - choose the domain or subdomain for the website in question, then choose if our system should create the .htaccess file inside the primary folder or inside a subfolder and you shall be all set. You don't require any computer programming skills or any experience with such matters, due to the fact that there will be nothing else to do. If you would like to remove the protection at some point, you will be able to see all the websites that are protected inside the same exact section of the CP with a Delete button alongside each one of them.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting

If you do not want others to use your images on their sites without your permission, you could easily switch on the hotlink protection feature, that is supplied with all semi-dedicated server plans. As an alternative to setting up an .htaccess file yourself inside the website folder and writing some code in it, which is the common way to deny direct linking to files, you may use an incredibly simple tool, that we've integrated into the Hepsia Control Panel. With it, you will only have to choose the site which has to be protected and our system shall do the rest. Moreover, you can determine if the .htaccess file will be created straight in the root folder or within a subfolder, if you would like to switch on the hotlink security function only for some content and not for the entire Internet site. Deactivating it is just as fast - you will only have to mark the checkbox next to the specific site and to click on the Delete button.