Hotlinking is an expression that describes the inclusion of images on a particular website through the use of direct links. In case you have website A, for instance, and somebody creates website B and wants to add a couple of images from your website, they could either save the images and then add them on their Internet site or they can simply put links on their site to the images on yours. Thus, each time a visitor opens site B, site B will steal traffic from your own Internet site A, because the images will load straight from your website hosting account. This method is usually 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 are able to restrict their capability to use direct links to your files on their websites.

Hotlinking Protection in Hosting

As our hosting provide a simple and practical hotlink protection tool, you will be able to secure your content from showing on third-party Internet sites with literally no more than 2 clicks, even if you don't have a lot of experience with this type of matters. The tool comes with the Hepsia hosting CP and once you open it, you'll only have to select the domain or subdomain which you want to protect. Additionally, you could also pick if the hotlink protection shall be enabled for the default domain root folder or exclusively for a subfolder. You shall not have to do anything else, as our system will create an .htaccess file automatically in the needed location and shall include the necessary code within it. All Internet websites with enabled hotlink protection shall be listed inside the exact same section, so you can easily disable this service for any of them with just a click.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers

If you don't want others to use your images on their websites without your approval, you can easily switch on the hotlink protection function, that's provided with all semi-dedicated server package deals. As opposed to creating an .htaccess file by hand within the site folder and writing some code inside it, which is the conventional method to deny direct linking to files, you may use an incredibly simple tool, that we have integrated into the Hepsia CP. By using it, you will simply need to select the Internet site that should be protected and our system shall do the rest. Optionally, you can decide whether the .htaccess file will be set up directly inside the root folder or in a subfolder, when you would like to switch on the hotlink security function just for some content and not for the entire website. Stopping it is just as easy - you will only have to mark the checkbox next to the respective Internet site and to click on the Delete button.