Hotlinking is an expression which represents the addition of images on a given site through the use of direct links. In case you have site A, for example, and an individual creates site B and wishes to add a couple of images from your site, they are able to either save the images and then include them on their website or they may simply put links on their Internet site to the images on yours. Consequently, when a visitor opens Internet site B, site B will steal traffic from your own site A, as the images will load from your hosting account. This technique is oftentimes used for documents and other sorts of files also. If you would like to prevent 3rd parties from stealing your content and from using your own website hosting account’s resources, you can limit their ability to use direct links to your files on their websites.
Hotlinking Protection in Cloud Hosting
You can easily shield your content if you generate an .htaccess file inside the website’s root folder, but in case that you do not have previous experience, you could use our hotlink protection tool. The latter is included with all cloud hosting plans which we offer and could be accessed via the in-house built Hepsia CP. The protection can be activated in two easy steps - choose the domain or subdomain for the Internet site in question, then choose if our system should create the .htaccess file inside the primary folder or inside a subfolder and you'll be ready. You don't need any programming skills or any experience with such matters, because there will be nothing else to do. If you would like to disable the protection eventually, you can see all of the websites which are protected in the same exact section of the Control Panel with a Delete button beside each one of them.
Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting
If you do not want other people to use your images on their websites without your authorization, you can easily activate the hotlink security feature, which is available with all semi-dedicated server plans. As an alternative to setting up an .htaccess file yourself inside the website folder and writing some code within it, which is the conventional way to deny direct linking to files, you can use a really simple tool, that we've integrated into the Hepsia CP. Using it, you will only need to select the website that needs to be secured and our system shall do the rest. Moreover, you can choose if the .htaccess file will be generated directly in the root folder or in a subfolder, in case you want to activate the hotlink security feature just for some content and not for the entire site. Disabling it is just as simple - you'll only have to mark the checkbox alongside the specific website and to click on the Delete button.