Hotlinking is a commonly accepted Internet expression for linking to another website’s images. Quite simply, if you develop a site, another person may want to use the images that you have and instead of downloading them from your site and then uploading them to their site, they can simply put links straight to your Internet site. That way, each time a visitor opens their website, the images will be loaded from your account, consequently stealing from your own monthly traffic quota, in addition to the copyright issues that could appear or that somebody may be trying to deceive people into thinking that they're actually on your website. In rare occasions, documents and other sorts of files could also be linked in the very same way. To prevent this from happening and to avoid such situations, you can enable hotlink protection for your site.

Hotlinking Protection in Web Hosting

It will not require more than several mouse clicks to switch on the hotlink protection feature we provide even if this is the 1st website hosting account which you use, because all of our Linux web hosting service come with a very simple and easy to work with tool that will permit you to stop direct links to your content. The tool is a component of our innovative Hepsia CP, so it features the exact same easy-to-use point & click interface. Once you log in to your account’s back office and go to the Hotlink Protection section, you will simply need to select the domain or subdomain that you would like to protect from a drop-down list. If you wish to switch on this function only for a particular site folder, you've got the option to do that. All websites with active hotlink protection shall appear within this section and you can easily disable the service by selecting the checkbox next to the given Internet site and clicking on the Delete button.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers

If you start a semi-dedicated server account and you learn that someone is linking to your files without your approval, you could easily cut them off by switching on the hotlink protection function we offer. While the standard method of doing that is to generate an .htaccess file, we have a special tool that can do this automatically and you'll simply have to select the Internet site in question and to decide whether our system should create the required file in the main folder or within a subfolder. The tool is a component of our custom Hepsia CP and features the same user-friendly interface, so you will be able to use it without any difficulties even if you have never used any hosting service before. You can turn off the hotlink security function for any website/folder with a click through the exact same section.