Hotlinking is a widely accepted Internet phrase for linking to another website’s images. In other words, if you build a site, some other person may want to use the images you have and instead of downloading them from your website and then uploading them to their Internet site, they can simply put links directly to your website. That way, whenever a visitor opens their site, the images shall be loaded from your account, consequently stealing from your own monthly traffic quota, let alone the copyright issues which could arise or that someone may be trying to deceive people into believing that they're actually on your website. In rare occasions, documents and other kinds of files can also be linked in the very same way. To prevent this from happening and to avoid this kind of situations, you may activate hotlink protection for your website.

Hotlinking Protection in Shared Web Hosting

It shall not take more than several clicks to enable the hotlink security feature which we provide even if this is the very first hosting account which you use, due to the fact that all our Linux shared web hosting services feature a simple and easy to work with tool that will enable you to prevent direct links to your content. The tool is a component of our innovative Hepsia Control Panel, so it features the same exact easy-to-use point-and-click interface. As soon as you log in to your account’s back office and go to the Hotlink Protection section, you'll simply need to select the domain or subdomain you want to secure from a drop-down list. If you wish to switch on this service only for a particular site folder, you've got the option to do that. All sites with enabled hotlink protection will appear within this section and you will be able to disable the service by selecting the checkbox beside the given site and pressing the Delete button.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting

If you don't want other individuals to use your images on their sites without your authorization, you may easily enable the hotlink security function, which is available with all semi-dedicated server package deals. Rather than setting up an .htaccess file by hand inside the Internet site folder and writing some code in it, which is the conventional approach to deny direct linking to files, you could use an exceedingly simple tool, that we have integrated into the Hepsia Control Panel. By using it, you'll simply need to select the Internet site that needs to be protected and our system will do the rest. Moreover, you can make a decision if the .htaccess file needs to be set up directly in the root folder or in a subfolder, if you'd like to activate the hotlink protection function only for some content and not for the whole website. Deactivating it is just as fast - you will only need to mark the checkbox alongside the particular site and to click on the Delete button.