Hotlinking is a term which refers to the inclusion of images on a particular Internet site through the use of direct links. When you have website A, for instance, and a person creates website B and wants to add a couple of images from your website, they're able to either save the images and then add them on their Internet site or they could simply place links on their website to the images on yours. Subsequently, each time a visitor opens website B, site B will steal traffic from your own Internet site A, as the images will load from your hosting account. This approach is usually used for documents and other sorts of files also. If you'd like to prevent third parties from stealing your content and from using your own hosting account’s resources, you could restrict their capability to use direct links to your files on their websites.
Hotlinking Protection in Cloud Website Hosting
It won't require more than a number of clicks to enable the hotlink protection function that we offer even if this is the first hosting account which you use, as all of our cloud website hosting feature a rather simple and easy-to-use tool that will enable you to prevent direct links to your content. The tool is an element of our innovative Hepsia Control Panel, so it provides the same intuitive point-and-click interface. Once you log in to your account’s back office and go to the Hotlink Protection section, you will simply have to select the domain or subdomain that you would like 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 sites with enabled hotlink protection shall appear inside this section and you could disable the service by selecting the checkbox next to the given Internet site and clicking on the Delete button.
Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers
If you don't want other individuals to use your images on their Internet sites without your authorization, you could easily switch on the hotlink security feature, that is provided with all semi-dedicated server packages. As an alternative to setting up an .htaccess file yourself inside the Internet site folder and writing some code within it, which is the standard way to deny direct linking to files, you could use an exceedingly simple tool, which we have incorporated into the Hepsia Control Panel. From it, you'll only need to pick the website that needs to be protected and our system shall do the rest. Additionally, you can choose if the .htaccess file should be set up straight within the root folder or within a subfolder, if you would like to activate the hotlink protection feature just for some content and not for the entire website. Deactivating it is just as easy - you will simply have to mark the checkbox beside the particular Internet site and to click on the Delete button.