Hotlinking is an expression that identifies the inclusion of images on a particular website using direct links. If you have website A, for example, and someone creates website B and wishes to include a number of images from your Internet site, they are able to either save the images and then add them on their Internet site or they may simply place links on their site to the images on yours. Subsequently, whenever a visitor opens site B, site B will steal traffic from your own website A, because the images will load from your website hosting account. This process is oftentimes used for documents and other types of files also. If you wish to prevent third parties from stealing your content and from using your own web hosting account’s resources, you'll be able to limit their capability to use direct links to your files on their Internet sites.
Hotlinking Protection in Cloud Website Hosting
Since our Linux cloud website hosting packages come with a simple and handy hotlink protection tool, you'll be able to defend your content from displaying on third-party sites with literally only 2 mouse clicks, even if you do not have a lot of experience with this type of matters. The tool is included with the Hepsia hosting CP and when you open it, you will just need to pick the domain or subdomain that you want to protect. In addition, you may also select if the hotlink protection shall be active for the default domain root folder or just for a subfolder. You shall not have to do anything else, because our system shall create an .htaccess file automatically in the desired location and will add the required code within it. All Internet websites with enabled hotlink protection will be listed in the very same section, so that you can disable this service for any of them with a click.
Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting
If you have a semi-dedicated server account with our company and you discover that somebody has hotlinked any of your images, you may use the protection tool we have created and incorporated into our in-house built Hepsia hosting Control Panel. Whenever you enable this option, a server-generated image shall appear on the third-party Internet site as a substitute for your real images. You'll only have to go to the Hotlink Protection section within the Control Panel and pick the domain or subdomain that your website uses from a handy drop-down menu - it's as elementary as that. If required, you will also have the option to enable the function for a specific subfolder and not for the website in general. Deactivating the protection is as effortless - get back to the same section, check the box next to the given website and then click on the Delete button.