Hotlinking is a largely accepted Internet expression for linking to another website’s images. In other words, if you create an Internet site, another person may want to use the images which you have and instead of downloading them from your site and then uploading them to their own Internet site, they can simply put links directly to your Internet site. That way, each time a visitor opens their website, the images will be loaded from your account, thus stealing from your own monthly traffic quota, not to mention the copyright problems that can present themselves or that somebody could be trying to deceive people into believing that they're in fact on your website. In rare instances, documents and other types of files could also be linked in the very same way. To prevent this from happening and to avoid this type of situations, you could permit hotlink protection for your website.

Hotlinking Protection in Shared Website Hosting

You can easily secure your content if you set up an .htaccess file inside the website’s root folder, but if you do not have previous experience, you should use our hotlink protection tool. The latter comes with all shared website hosting package deals which we offer and could be accessed through the in-house built Hepsia CP. The protection may be activated in two simple steps - choose the domain or subdomain for the Internet site in question, then choose if our system should set up the .htaccess file inside the main folder or in a subfolder and you'll be all set. You do not need any programming skills or any experience with such matters, since there shall be nothing else to do. If you'd like to remove the protection at some point, you will be able to see all the sites which are protected in the very same section of the CP with a Delete button next to each one of them.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers

We provide an uncomplicated solution to shield your whole content and even if you are not really tech-savvy, you can take advantage of it with a few clicks. The conventional way to activate server-side hotlink security is to generate an .htaccess file and to add a number of directives in it. With the tool which you'll discover inside the Hepsia Control Panel, supplied with all of the semi-dedicated server accounts, you'll simply have to select the Internet site that you want to protect and our system will create the .htaccess file for you, adding all of the necessary content within it. You can even use this function for just one folder instead of the whole site - you just need to specify where the .htaccess file needs to be set up. If you no longer need the hotlink protection to be active, you may deactivate it with one mouse click via the same exact section of your Control Panel.