Hotlinking is an expression that represents the inclusion of images on a given website by using direct links. If you have website A, for example, and somebody creates site B and wishes to add a number of images from your website, they could either save the images and then add them on their website or they could simply place links on their Internet site to the images on yours. Consequently, whenever a visitor opens Internet site B, site B will steal traffic from your own website A, since the images shall load directly from your hosting account. This technique is typically used for documents and other types of files as well. If you would like to prevent third parties from stealing your content and from using your own web hosting account’s resources, you'll be able to limit their capability to use direct links to your files on their websites.
Hotlinking Protection in Cloud Web Hosting
You can easily protect your content if you create an .htaccess file inside the website’s root folder, but just in case you do not have previous experience, you can use our hotlink protection tool. The latter is provided with all cloud web hosting packages that we offer and could be accessed using the in-house built Hepsia Control Panel. The protection may be activated in two easy steps - select the domain or subdomain for the site in question, then choose if our system should create the .htaccess file in the main folder or in a subfolder and you shall be good to go. You do not need any programming expertise or any experience with this sort of matters, as there shall be nothing else to do. If you'd like to turn off the protection at some point, you can see all of the Internet sites that are protected in the very same section of the Control Panel with a Delete button beside each of them.
Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers
If you have a semi-dedicated server account with us and you discover that another person has hotlinked any of your images, you should use the protection tool we have designed and included in our in-house built Hepsia hosting Control Panel. Whenever you switch on this function, a server-generated image will appear on the third-party Internet site rather than your actual images. You'll only need to visit the Hotlink Protection section within the CP and choose the domain or subdomain your site uses from a convenient drop-down menu - it is as basic as that. If required, you shall also have the option to enable the function for a specific subfolder and not for the website altogether. Deactivating the feature is just as easy - go back to the exact same section, check the box next to the particular site and then press the Delete button.