Hotlinking is a term that represents the addition of images on a given website via direct links. When you have site A, for example, and someone creates website B and wants to include a couple of images from your website, they could either save the images and then add them on their site or they may simply place links on their site to the images on yours. Subsequently, when a visitor opens website B, site B will steal traffic from your own site A, as the images will load directly from your hosting account. This method is usually used for documents and other kinds of files also. If you want to prevent 3rd parties from stealing your content and from using your own hosting account’s resources, you'll be able to limit their ability to use direct links to your files on their Internet sites.
Hotlinking Protection in Website Hosting
It shall not require more than a number of mouse clicks to activate the hotlink security function we offer you even if this is the very first web hosting account which you use, because all our website hosting come with a very simple and user-friendly tool that will enable you to stop direct links to your content. The tool is part of our revolutionary Hepsia Control Panel, so it provides the same easy-to-use point-and-click interface. After you log in to your account’s back office and go to the Hotlink Protection section, you'll only need to pick the domain or subdomain that you want to secure from a drop-down list. If you want to enable this service only for a particular Internet site folder, you've got the option to do that. All sites with enabled hotlink protection will appear inside this section and you will be able to disable the service by selecting the checkbox next to the given Internet site and clicking on the Delete button.
Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers
If you open a semi-dedicated server account and you find out that someone is linking to your files without your permission, you will be able to easily cut them off by switching on the hotlink protection function that we offer you. While the regular method of doing this is to generate an .htaccess file, we've got a special tool that can execute this automatically and you shall simply have to pick the website in question and to determine whether our system should create the necessary file inside the main folder or inside a subfolder. The tool is a component of our custom Hepsia CP and features the same user-friendly interface, so you'll be able to use it with no issues even in case you have never used any hosting service before. You may deactivate the hotlink security feature for any website/folder with a click through the exact same section.