Hotlinking is an expression which represents the addition of images on a given Internet site through direct links. In case you have site A, for instance, and someone creates site B and wants to add a few images from your site, they are able to either save the images and then add them on their website or they can simply put links on their site to the images on yours. Subsequently, every time a visitor opens Internet site B, site B will steal traffic from your own Internet site A, since the images shall load from your hosting account. This method is oftentimes used for documents and other sorts of files as well. If you want to prevent third parties from stealing your content and from using your own website hosting account’s resources, you'll be able to limit their capability to use direct links to your files on their Internet sites.

Hotlinking Protection in Shared Hosting

It will not require more than several mouse clicks to activate the hotlink protection function which we offer you even if this is the very first hosting account you use, as all our shared hosting feature a quite simple and user-friendly tool that will allow you to stop direct links to your content. The tool is part of our revolutionary Hepsia CP, so it features the very same intuitive point-and-click interface. After you log in to your account’s back office and visit the Hotlink Protection section, you will only have to select the domain or subdomain that you would like to secure from a drop-down list. If you'd like to activate this feature only for a certain Internet site folder, you will have the option to do that. All websites with enabled hotlink protection will appear in this section and you can turn off the service by selecting the checkbox alongside the given Internet site and clicking on the Delete button.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting

If you do not want other people to use your images on their sites without your authorization, you can easily switch on the hotlink security function, that's available with all semi-dedicated server plans. Instead of generating an .htaccess file manually in the site folder and writing some code in it, which is the traditional way to deny direct linking to files, you can use a very simple tool, that we've included in the Hepsia Control Panel. By using it, you will only have to choose the Internet site which has to be secured and our system will do the rest. Additionally, you can determine if the .htaccess file should be created directly in the root folder or in a subfolder, in case you would like to activate the hotlink protection function just for some content and not for the whole site. Deactivating it is just as effortless - you'll simply have to mark the checkbox alongside the particular website and to click on the Delete button.