Hotlinking is a largely accepted Internet phrase for linking to another website’s images. Quite simply, if you build an Internet site, another person may want to use the images that you have and rather than downloading them from your site and then uploading them to their site, they may simply put links straight to your Internet site. In this way, every time a visitor opens their Internet site, the images will be loaded from your account, as a result stealing from your own monthly traffic quota, in addition to the copyright issues which could develop or that somebody can be trying to trick people into thinking that they are in fact on your Internet site. In rare occasions, documents and other sorts of files can also be linked in the exact same way. To prevent this from happening and to avoid this type of situations, you can permit hotlink protection for your website.

Hotlinking Protection in Shared Web Hosting

Due to the fact that our Linux shared web hosting service feature a simple and practical hotlink protection tool, you shall be able to shield your content from displaying on third-party Internet sites with literally no more than 2 clicks, even if you do not have much experience with this type of matters. The tool comes with the Hepsia hosting CP and when you open it, you will only have to select the domain or subdomain that you'd like to protect. Furthermore, you can also pick if the hotlink protection will be enabled for the default domain root folder or exclusively for a subfolder. You'll not need to do anything else, because our system will create an .htaccess file automatically within the preferred location and will add the required code inside it. All websites with active hotlink protection shall be listed in exactly the same section, so you could disable this service for any of them with a click.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers

If you have a semi-dedicated server account with us and you discover that someone has hotlinked any of your images, you can use the security tool which we have developed and integrated into our in-house built Hepsia hosting Control Panel. When you enable this option, a server-generated image shall appear on the third-party website in place of your actual images. You will only need to visit the Hotlink Protection section in the CP and select the domain or subdomain that your site uses from a convenient drop-down menu - it is as elementary as that. If required, you shall also have the option to activate the function for a particular subfolder and not for the website altogether. Deactivating the function is as simple - get back to the exact same section, check the box next to the specific Internet site and then click on the Delete button.