Hotlinking is a commonly accepted Internet phrase for linking to another website’s images. Quite simply, if you build an Internet site, someone else may want to use the images you have and rather than downloading them from your Internet site and then uploading them to their site, they can simply put links directly to your site. In this way, whenever a visitor opens their Internet site, the images shall be loaded from your account, as a result stealing from your own monthly traffic quota, in addition to the copyright problems that could appear or that somebody can be trying to deceive people into thinking that they are in fact on your Internet site. In rare instances, documents and other types of files can also be linked in the exact same way. To stop this from happening and to avoid such situations, you may permit hotlink protection for your website.
Hotlinking Protection in Shared Web Hosting
There is a method for preventing the hotlinking of your images via an .htaccess file inside the website’s root directory, but if you are not very tech-savvy, we furthermore provide a very time and effort saving tool that will permit you to activate the protection with several mouse clicks and without typing any code. The tool can be accessed from the Hepsia CP, offered with all our Linux shared web hosting and the only two things that you will have to choose are a domain/subdomain from a drop-down menu and whether the protection should be enabled for the main Internet site folder or for some subfolder. Our system will do the rest, so you shall not have to do anything else manually on your end. If you wish to disable the hotlink protection option eventually, you will simply have to revisit the exact same section, to mark the checkbox next to it and to press the Delete button.
Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting
We offer a simple solution to secure your content and even if you aren't really tech-savvy, you can benefit from it with several clicks. The standard technique to activate server-side hotlink security is to create an .htaccess file and to add a couple of directives in it. With the tool that you will find inside the Hepsia CP, offered with all semi-dedicated server accounts, you'll simply need to pick the website that you need to protect and our system will set up the .htaccess file for you, including all of the essential content in it. You can even use this feature for only one folder as opposed to the whole Internet site - you just need to specify where the .htaccess file needs to be set up. If you no longer want the hotlink security to be active, you'll be able to disable it with a single click via the very same section of your Control Panel.