Hotlinking is a largely 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 which you have and rather than downloading them from your Internet site and then uploading them to their own website, they could simply put links to your website. In this way, every time a visitor opens their Internet site, the images shall be loaded from your account, as a result stealing from your own monthly traffic quota, in addition to the copyright issues that can appear or that somebody could be trying to trick people into thinking that they are in fact on your site. In rare occasions, documents and other kinds of files can also be linked in the same exact way. To stop this from happening and to avoid such situations, you may activate hotlink protection for your Internet site.

Hotlinking Protection in Web Hosting

You can easily shield your content if you generate an .htaccess file within the website’s root folder, but in case that you don't have previous experience, you should use our hotlink protection tool. The latter comes with all web hosting package deals which we offer and can be accessed through the in-house built Hepsia CP. The protection can be enabled in two simple steps - select the domain or subdomain for the site in question, then select if our system should set up the .htaccess file within the main folder or in a subfolder and you shall be ready. You don't need any computer programming capabilities or any experience with this type of matters, because there shall be nothing else to do. If you wish to remove the protection at some time, you could see all the websites that are protected within the same section of the Control Panel with a Delete button beside each of them.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers

If you create a semi-dedicated server account and you discover that another person is linking to your files without your consent, you will be able to easily cut them off by activating the hotlink protection feature we offer. While the common way to do this is to set up an .htaccess file, we have got a special tool which can easily do this automatically and you'll simply have to pick the Internet site in question and to determine whether our system should set up the needed file in the main folder or inside a subfolder. The tool is an element of our customized Hepsia Control Panel and provides the same user-friendly interface, so you will be able to use it without difficulties even in case you have never used any website hosting service before. You may switch off the hotlink protection function for any website/folder with a click from the same section.