Hotlinking is a commonly accepted Internet term for linking to another website’s images. To put it differently, if you create a site, some other person may want to use the images which you have and rather than downloading them from your website and then uploading them to their Internet site, they may simply put links directly to your site. In this way, every time a visitor opens their website, the images will be loaded from your account, thus stealing from your own monthly traffic quota, not to mention the copyright issues which could arise or that someone could be trying to trick people into believing that they're actually on your Internet site. In rare occasions, documents and other kinds of files can also be linked in the exact same way. To prevent this from happening and to avoid this kind of situations, you may activate hotlink protection for your site.

Hotlinking Protection in Web Hosting

You can easily shield your content if you generate an .htaccess file in the website’s root folder, but in case you don't have previous experience, you need to use our hotlink protection tool. The latter comes with all web hosting plans we offer and can be accessed using the in-house built Hepsia CP. The protection can be activated in two basic steps - choose the domain or subdomain for the website in question, then select if our system should set up the .htaccess file inside the main folder or inside a subfolder and you shall be all set. You do not need any programming skills or any experience with this kind of matters, as there will be nothing else to do. If you want to remove the protection at some time, you can see all of the Internet sites that are protected within the same section of the CP with a Delete button next to each of them.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers

If you have a semi-dedicated server account with our company and you find out that someone has hotlinked any of your images, you should use the protection tool we have created and integrated into our in-house built Hepsia hosting Control Panel. As soon as you switch on this option, a server-generated image will appear on the third-party Internet site as a substitute for your real images. You'll only have to check out the Hotlink Protection section within the Control Panel and select the domain or subdomain that your site uses from a convenient drop-down menu - it is as simple as that. If needed, you shall also have the option to switch on the feature only for a particular subfolder and not for the website in its entirety. Deactivating the protection is just as easy - go back to the same section, check the box beside the specific Internet site and then click on the Delete button.