Hotlinking is a term that represents the inclusion of images on a particular Internet site through direct links. If you have website A, for example, and somebody creates website B and wants to add a number of images from your website, they're able to either save the images and then add them on their website or they could simply place links on their Internet site to the images on yours. Consequently, when a visitor opens website B, site B will steal traffic from your own website A, since the images shall load from your website hosting account. This method is sometimes used for documents and other sorts of files as well. If you would like to prevent third parties from stealing your content and from using your own hosting account’s resources, you are able to restrict their ability to use direct links to your files on their sites.
Hotlinking Protection in Cloud Hosting
There's a way of avoiding the hotlinking of your images via an .htaccess file in the website’s root directory, but if you aren't very tech-savvy, we additionally offer a very intuitive tool that will permit you to activate the protection with several clicks and without inputting any code. The tool can be accessed via the Hepsia Control Panel, included with all our Linux cloud hosting packages and the only two things that you will have to pick are a domain/subdomain from a drop-down menu and if the protection must be activated for the main website folder or for some subfolder. Our system shall do the rest, so you shall not need to do anything else personally on your end. If you decide to turn off the hotlink protection option at some point, you will simply have to come back to the same section, to mark the checkbox at the side of it and to click on the Delete button.
Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting
If you have a semi-dedicated server account with our company and you discover that another person has hotlinked any of your images, you can use the security tool we have developed and integrated into our in-house built Hepsia hosting CP. Once you switch on this option, a server-generated image will appear on the third-party site rather than your real images. You'll only have to go to the Hotlink Protection section in the CP and choose the domain or subdomain your website uses from a handy drop-down menu - it's as simple as that. If needed, you shall also have the option to switch on the function for a particular subfolder and not for the website altogether. Deactivating the function is as effortless - go back to the exact same section, check the box next to the particular site and then click on the Delete button.