Hotlinking is an expression which describes the addition of images on a particular website using direct links. When you have site A, for example, and a person creates site B and wishes to include a few images from your Internet site, they can either save the images and then include them on their Internet site or they can simply put links on their website to the images on yours. Consequently, each time a visitor opens Internet site B, site B will steal traffic from your own site A, because the images will load directly from your website hosting account. This technique is typically used for documents and other kinds of files also. If you want to prevent third parties from stealing your content and from using your own hosting account’s resources, you are able to limit their capability to use direct links to your files on their Internet sites.

Hotlinking Protection in Shared Web Hosting

It shall not require more than several clicks to activate the hotlink protection function we offer even if this is the first web hosting account which you use, because all our Linux shared web hosting services include a quite simple and easy-to-use tool that will enable you to stop direct links to your content. The tool is an element of our innovative Hepsia CP, so it features the exact same easy-to-use point & click interface. After you log in to your account’s back office and go to the Hotlink Protection section, you'll only need to select the domain or subdomain that you'd like to protect from a drop-down list. If you would like to activate this function only for a specific Internet site folder, you've got the option to do that. All Internet sites with enabled hotlink protection shall appear in this section and you will be able to deactivate the service by selecting the checkbox beside the given site and pressing the Delete button.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting

If you have a semi-dedicated server account with us and you discover that somebody has hotlinked any of your images, you may use the security tool we have designed and incorporated into our in-house built Hepsia hosting Control Panel. When you activate this feature, a server-generated image will appear on the third-party site instead of your actual images. You will only need to go to the Hotlink Protection section within the Control Panel and select the domain or subdomain which your website uses from a practical drop-down menu - it's as basic as that. If required, you'll also have the option to activate the feature for a specific subfolder and not for the website in its entirety. Deactivating the protection is equally simple - go back to the exact same section, check the box beside the given website and then click on the Delete button.