Hotlinking is a largely accepted Internet phrase for linking to another website’s images. Quite simply, if you build an Internet site, someone else may want to use the images you have and instead of downloading them from your website and then uploading them to their Internet site, they can simply put links directly to your Internet site. That way, every time a visitor opens their website, the images shall be loaded from your account, consequently stealing from your own monthly traffic quota, not to mention the copyright issues that may appear or that someone can be trying to trick people into believing that they are actually on your website. In rare instances, documents and other sorts of files can also be linked in the same exact way. To prevent this from happening and to avoid this kind of situations, you may activate hotlink protection for your website.
Hotlinking Protection in Shared Web Hosting
You can easily shield your content if you set up an .htaccess file inside the website’s root folder, but in case that you don't have previous experience, you should use our hotlink protection tool. The latter is included with all shared web hosting plans which we offer and could be accessed using the in-house built Hepsia CP. The protection could be turned on in 2 basic steps - pick the domain or subdomain for the website in question, then pick if our system should set up the .htaccess file in the primary folder or in a subfolder and you'll be ready. You don't require any programming expertise or any experience with this type of matters, due to the fact that there will be nothing else to do. If you would like to disable the protection at some time, you could see all the websites which are protected in the exact same section of the CP with a Delete button next to each one of them.
Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers
If you don't want other people to use your images on their sites without your approval, you can easily switch on the hotlink protection function, that is supplied with all semi-dedicated server plans. As opposed to setting up an .htaccess file yourself within the site folder and writing some code in it, which is the standard method to deny direct linking to files, you could use an incredibly simple tool, which we've integrated into the Hepsia Control Panel. With it, you will only have to pick the website which needs to be secured and our system shall do the rest. Moreover, you can determine if the .htaccess file needs to be set up straight in the root folder or within a subfolder, when you would like to enable the hotlink protection feature just for some content and not for the entire Internet site. Disabling it is just as effortless - you'll simply need to mark the checkbox next to the specific Internet site and to click on the Delete button.