Hotlinking is an expression which describes the addition of images on a particular Internet site using direct links. In case you have website A, for example, and somebody creates website B and wishes 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 may simply place links on their Internet site to the images on yours. As a result, each time a visitor opens Internet site B, site B will steal traffic from your own site A, because the images will load from your website hosting account. This approach is oftentimes used for documents and other kinds of files too. If you would like to prevent 3rd parties from stealing your content and from using your own hosting account’s resources, you can limit their ability to use direct links to your files on their Internet sites.
Hotlinking Protection in Cloud Hosting
Due to the fact that our Linux cloud packages feature a simple and convenient hotlink protection tool, you will be able to defend your content from showing on third-party sites with literally just a couple of clicks, even if you do not have a lot of experience with this type of matters. The tool is available in the Hepsia hosting CP and once you open it, you will only need to pick the domain or subdomain you want to protect. Optionally, you may also choose if the hotlink protection shall be active for the default domain root folder or only for a subfolder. You won't have to do anything else, due to the fact that our system shall create an .htaccess file automatically within the needed location and shall add the needed code in it. All websites with active hotlink protection will be listed within the same section, so you can easily disable this service for each of them with a click.
Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting
If you have a semi-dedicated server account with us and you discover that someone has hotlinked any of your images, you can use the security tool we have created and included in our in-house built Hepsia hosting CP. As soon as you enable this feature, a server-generated image will appear on the third-party site instead of your real images. You'll only need to check out the Hotlink Protection section in the Control Panel and select the domain or subdomain your site uses from a convenient drop-down menu - it's as elementary as that. If required, you shall also have the option to activate the function for a particular subfolder and not for the website as a whole. Deactivating the protection is just as simple - get back to the exact same section, check the box beside the specific Internet site and then press the Delete button.