Hotlinking is a commonly accepted Internet expression for linking to another website’s images. In other words, if you create an Internet site, somebody else may want to use the images that you have and instead of downloading them from your Internet site and then uploading them to their own site, they can 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, hence stealing from your own monthly traffic quota, in addition to the copyright problems which could develop or that somebody may be trying to deceive people into thinking that they're in fact on your site. In rare situations, documents and other types of files can also be linked in the very same way. To stop this from happening and to avoid this sort of situations, you could permit hotlink protection for your website.
Hotlinking Protection in Shared Website Hosting
There is a way to avoid the hotlinking of your images via an .htaccess file inside the website’s root directory, but if you are not very tech-savvy, we also provide a very easy-to-work-with tool that will permit you to enable the protection with just a few mouse clicks and without typing any code. The tool could be accessed from the Hepsia Control Panel, offered with all our Linux shared website hosting service and the only 2 things which you'll need to choose are a domain/subdomain from a drop-down menu and whether the protection should be activated for the main Internet site folder or for some subfolder. Our system will do the rest, so you won't have to do anything else manually on your end. If you choose to disable the hotlink protection option eventually, you will simply have to go back to the exact same section, to mark the checkbox beside it and to click on the Delete button.
Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers
If you have a semi-dedicated server account with our company and you notice that someone has hotlinked any of your images, you may use the security tool we've created and integrated into our in-house built Hepsia hosting CP. Whenever you activate this function, a server-generated image will appear on the third-party Internet site as a substitute for your real images. You'll only have to check out the Hotlink Protection section inside the Control Panel and pick the domain or subdomain which your site uses from a handy drop-down menu - it's as easy as that. If required, you will also have the option to enable the feature only for a particular subfolder and not for the website altogether. Deactivating the feature is as simple - get back to the same section, check the box alongside the specific Internet site and then press the Delete button.