Hotlinking is a commonly accepted Internet expression for linking to another website’s images. Basically, if you build a website, some other person may want to use the images that you have and rather than downloading them from your website and then uploading them to their website, they may simply put links straight to your site. That way, every time a visitor opens their Internet site, the images will be loaded from your account, thus stealing from your own monthly traffic quota, in addition to the copyright issues that could develop or that someone can be trying to trick people into believing that they are actually on your website. In rare instances, documents and other types of files can also be linked in the same exact way. To prevent this from happening and to avoid this sort of situations, you may permit hotlink protection for your Internet site.
Hotlinking Protection in Shared Web Hosting
It will not take more than a few mouse clicks to enable the hotlink security function that we offer even if this is the very first hosting account you use, due to the fact that all of our shared web hosting plans include a quite simple and easy-to-use tool that will enable you to stop direct links to your content. The tool is a component of our advanced Hepsia Control Panel, so it has the same intuitive point & click interface. After you log in to your account’s back office and navigate to the Hotlink Protection section, you'll only have to select the domain or subdomain you want to secure from a drop-down list. If you would like to activate this function only for a specific site folder, you will have the option to do that. All websites with enabled hotlink protection will appear within this section and you can easily disable the service by selecting the checkbox beside the given Internet site and pressing the Delete button.
Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers
If you do not want other people to use your images on their websites without your authorization, you can easily switch on the hotlink protection function, that's supplied with all semi-dedicated server package deals. Instead of generating an .htaccess file manually in the site folder and writing some code within it, which is the traditional way to deny direct linking to files, you could use an incredibly simple tool, that we have included in the Hepsia Control Panel. From it, you'll simply have to select the Internet site that should be protected and our system shall do the rest. Moreover, you can determine whether the .htaccess file will be set up straight within the root folder or inside a subfolder, when you want to activate the hotlink protection feature only for some content and not for the whole Internet site. Stopping it is just as simple - you'll only need to mark the checkbox beside the specific Internet site and to click on the Delete button.