Hotlinking is a term that represents the addition of images on a particular Internet site through the use of direct links. If you have website A, for example, and someone creates site B and wants to add a few images from your Internet site, they could either save the images and then add them on their website or they could simply put links on their site to the images on yours. Thus, every time a visitor opens Internet site B, site B will steal traffic from your own site A, because the images will load straight from your hosting account. This technique is typically used for documents and other types of files also. If you would like to prevent third 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 sites.
Hotlinking Protection in Shared Hosting
There's a way of preventing the hotlinking of your images by using an .htaccess file in the website’s root directory, but if you aren't very tech-savvy, we furthermore offer a very time and effort saving tool that will permit you to activate the protection with just a few clicks and without inputting any code. The tool can be accessed through the Hepsia Control Panel, included with all our Linux shared hosting and the only 2 things which you will have to select are a domain/subdomain from a drop-down menu and whether the protection must be activated for the main site folder or for some subfolder. Our system shall do the rest, so you won't need to do anything else manually on your end. If you choose to deactivate the hotlink protection option eventually, you will simply have to return to the exact same section, to mark the checkbox beside it and to press the Delete button.
Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers
Our company offers an uncomplicated solution to shield your entire content and even if you aren't very tech-savvy, you'll be able to benefit from it with a couple of clicks. The conventional approach to activate server-side hotlink protection is to generate an .htaccess file and to include a number of directives in it. With the tool that you will find within the Hepsia CP, which comes with all semi-dedicated server accounts, you'll simply need to select the website that you want to protect and our system shall create the .htaccess file for you, adding all the required content within it. You could also use this function for only one folder as opposed to the whole website - you just need to specify where the .htaccess file has to be set up. If you no longer need the hotlink protection to be switched on, you could disable it with just one click through the exact same section of your CP.