Hotlinking is an expression that refers to the inclusion of images on a particular Internet site using direct links. In case you have site A, for instance, and somebody creates site B and wants to add a couple 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 put links on their Internet site to the images on yours. As a result, each time a visitor opens site B, site B will steal traffic from your own website A, because the images shall load straight from your web hosting account. This technique is oftentimes used for documents and other kinds of files too. If you want to prevent third parties from stealing your content and from using your own hosting account’s resources, you'll be able to limit their capability to use direct links to your files on their websites.
Hotlinking Protection in Cloud Website Hosting
There's a simple method for preventing the hotlinking of your images through an .htaccess file within the website’s root directory, but if you are not very tech-savvy, we additionally give you a very time and effort saving tool that will permit you to enable the protection with a few clicks and without writing any code. The tool could be accessed through the Hepsia Control Panel, provided with all our Linux cloud website hosting and the only 2 things which you will need to pick are a domain/subdomain from a drop-down menu and if the protection has to be enabled for the main website folder or for some subfolder. Our system will do the rest, so you won't need to do anything else manually on your end. If you wish to deactivate the hotlink protection option sometime, you'll just need to go back to exactly the same section, to mark the checkbox next to it and to click on the Delete button.
Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting
If you have a semi-dedicated server account with us and you notice that someone has hotlinked any of your images, you should use the protection tool we've designed and incorporated into our in-house built Hepsia hosting CP. As soon as you switch on this option, a server-generated image shall appear on the third-party Internet site as a substitute for your actual images. You will only have to visit the Hotlink Protection section inside the CP and pick the domain or subdomain which your site uses from a handy drop-down menu - it's as elementary as that. If required, you will also have the option to switch on the function only for a particular subfolder and not for the website altogether. Deactivating the function is as effortless - go back to exactly the same section, check the box alongside the particular site and then press the Delete button.