Hotlinking is a largely accepted Internet phrase for linking to another website’s images. To put it differently, if you build an Internet site, somebody else may want to use the images that you have and rather than downloading them from your site and then uploading them to their Internet site, they may simply put links straight to your Internet site. This way, each time a visitor opens their website, the images will be loaded from your account, hence stealing from your own monthly traffic quota, in addition to the copyright problems that could appear or that someone can be trying to deceive people into thinking that they are in fact on your site. In rare situations, documents and other kinds of files could also be linked in the same exact way. To prevent this from happening and to avoid such situations, you could enable hotlink protection for your site.
Hotlinking Protection in Website Hosting
You can easily shield your content if you set up an .htaccess file in the website’s root folder, but just in case you do not have previous experience, you need to use our hotlink protection tool. The latter is supplied with all website hosting plans that we offer and can be accessed through the in-house built Hepsia Control Panel. The protection can be turned on in 2 simple steps - choose the domain or subdomain for the site in question, then choose if our system should set up the .htaccess file in the primary folder or within a subfolder and you'll be all set. You do not need any programming capabilities or any experience with this type of matters, as there shall be nothing else to do. If you'd like to remove the protection eventually, you can see all of the Internet sites that are protected in the exact same section of the CP with a Delete button beside each one of them.
Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers
If you don't want other people to use your images on their Internet sites without your authorization, you may easily switch on the hotlink security feature, that is provided with all semi-dedicated server plans. As opposed to setting up an .htaccess file by hand in the site folder and writing some code within it, which is the traditional approach to deny direct linking to files, you can use an exceptionally simple tool, which we have integrated into the Hepsia Control Panel. From it, you will only need to pick the Internet site which should be protected and our system will do the rest. Also, you can choose if the .htaccess file should be generated directly within the root folder or within a subfolder, in case you would like to switch on the hotlink security function just for some content and not for the entire website. Disabling it is just as effortless - you will only have to mark the checkbox next to the particular site and to click on the Delete button.