Hotlinking is a largely accepted Internet term for linking to another website’s images. To put it differently, if you build a website, somebody else may want to use the images you have and rather than downloading them from your site and then uploading them to their own website, they can simply put links directly to your website. That way, every time a visitor opens their Internet site, the images will be loaded from your account, consequently stealing from your own monthly traffic quota, in addition to the copyright issues which may present themselves or that someone may be trying to trick people into believing that they're in fact on your Internet site. In rare situations, documents and other sorts of files may also be linked in the very same way. To prevent this from happening and to avoid this sort of situations, you may activate hotlink protection for your website.
Hotlinking Protection in Shared Web Hosting
It shall not take more than a number of mouse clicks to enable the hotlink security feature which we offer even if this is the very first web hosting account you use, because all our Linux shared web hosting include a very simple and user-friendly tool that will enable you to prevent direct links to your content. The tool is a component of our innovative Hepsia CP, so it provides the very same intuitive point & click interface. When you log in to your account’s back office and visit the Hotlink Protection section, you will simply have to choose the domain or subdomain you want to secure from a drop-down list. If you want to activate this service only for a specific website folder, you will have the option to do that. All websites with enabled hotlink protection shall appear within this section and you could turn off the service by selecting the checkbox beside the given website and pressing the Delete button.
Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting
Our company offers an effective solution to secure your entire content and even if you aren't very tech-savvy, you could take advantage of it with a few clicks. The usual way for you to activate server-side hotlink security is to create an .htaccess file and to include a number of directives inside it. With the tool that you will find within the Hepsia Control Panel, which comes with all semi-dedicated server accounts, you'll only need to choose the site which you need to secure and our system will create the .htaccess file for you, adding all the necessary content inside it. You could also use this option for only one folder as opposed to the whole Internet site - you just need to specify where the .htaccess file has to be set up. If you no longer need the hotlink security to be active, you'll be able to disable it with one mouse click via the same section of your CP.