Hotlinking is a term which refers to the inclusion of images on a given site through the use of direct links. If you have website A, for instance, and an individual creates website B and wants to include a couple of images from your Internet site, they are able to either save the images and then include them on their Internet site or they could simply put links on their Internet site to the images on yours. Subsequently, whenever a visitor opens website B, site B will steal traffic from your own website A, since the images shall load straight from your web hosting account. This approach is typically used for documents and other kinds of files also. If you wish to prevent 3rd parties from stealing your content and from using your own web hosting account’s resources, you are able to limit their capability to use direct links to your files on their sites.
Hotlinking Protection in Shared Hosting
You can easily protect your content if you set up an .htaccess file in the website’s root folder, but if you don't have previous experience, you could use our hotlink protection tool. The latter comes with all shared hosting plans we offer and could be accessed using the in-house built Hepsia CP. The protection can be enabled in two basic steps - select the domain or subdomain for the Internet site in question, then choose if our system should set up the .htaccess file within the main folder or in a subfolder and you shall be all set. You don't require any programming skills or any experience with this sort of matters, because there will be nothing else to do. If you wish to disable the protection eventually, you will be able to see all of the Internet sites which are protected in the same exact section of the Control Panel with a Delete button beside each of them.
Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting
If you don't want other individuals to use your images on their websites without your approval, you could easily activate the hotlink security function, that is available with all semi-dedicated server packages. As an alternative to setting up an .htaccess file manually in the Internet site folder and writing some code in it, which is the common approach to deny direct linking to files, you can use an exceptionally simple tool, which we have incorporated into the Hepsia Control Panel. From it, you'll simply need to pick the Internet site that needs to be secured and our system will do the rest. Furthermore, you can decide whether the .htaccess file needs to be set up straight within the root folder or inside a subfolder, if you would like to switch on the hotlink protection feature only for some content and not for the entire Internet site. Stopping it is just as fast - you'll only have to mark the checkbox next to the specific website and to click on the Delete button.