Hotlinking is a term which represents the inclusion of images on a given website using direct links. In case you have site A, for instance, and someone creates website B and wishes to add a couple of images from your website, they can either save the images and then include them on their site or they may simply place links on their Internet site to the images on yours. As a result, when a visitor opens website B, site B will steal traffic from your own website A, as the images shall load directly from your hosting account. This process is typically used for documents and other types of files as well. If you wish to prevent third parties from stealing your content and from using your own hosting account’s resources, you are able to limit their capability to use direct links to your files on their Internet sites.
Hotlinking Protection in Web Hosting
You can easily protect your content if you set up an .htaccess file inside the website’s root folder, but if you don't have previous experience, you need to use our hotlink protection tool. The latter is supplied with all web hosting plans which we offer and can be accessed via the in-house built Hepsia CP. The protection may be enabled in two easy steps - select the domain or subdomain for the website in question, then pick if our system should create the .htaccess file within the main folder or inside a subfolder and you'll be all set. You don't require any coding expertise or any experience with this type of matters, because there shall be nothing else to do. If you would like to disable the protection eventually, you could see all of the Internet sites which are protected inside the same exact section of the CP with a Delete button beside each of them.
Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers
We offer an effective solution to secure your whole content and even if you aren't very tech-savvy, you'll be able to take full advantage of it with a couple of clicks. The usual way to enable server-side hotlink protection is to create an .htaccess file and to add a few directives within it. With the tool that you will find in the Hepsia Control Panel, included with all of the semi-dedicated server accounts, you will only have to select the site that you need to protect and our system will set up the .htaccess file for you, adding all of the necessary content within it. You can even use this function for just one folder rather than the entire website - you just have to specify where the .htaccess file should be created. If you no longer require the hotlink protection to be active, you may disable it with a single mouse click from the same section of your Control Panel.