Hotlinking is a widely accepted Internet term for linking to another website’s images. Quite simply, if you build an Internet site, someone else may want to use the images which you have and instead of downloading them from your website and then uploading them to their Internet site, they can simply put links directly to your Internet site. In this way, when a visitor opens their website, the images shall be loaded from your account, thus stealing from your own monthly traffic quota, not to mention the copyright problems which could arise or that somebody can be trying to trick people into thinking that they are actually on your site. In rare situations, documents and other types of files may also be linked in the same exact way. To prevent this from happening and to avoid this kind of situations, you may activate hotlink protection for your site.
Hotlinking Protection in Cloud Hosting
You can easily secure your content if you set up an .htaccess file in the website’s root folder, but just in case you don't have previous experience, you can use our hotlink protection tool. The latter is provided with all cloud hosting package deals that we offer and can be accessed using the in-house built Hepsia Control Panel. The protection can be enabled in 2 simple steps - pick the domain or subdomain for the Internet site in question, then pick if our system should set up the .htaccess file inside the main folder or within a subfolder and you will be ready. You don't need any computer programming skills or any experience with this type of matters, as there will be nothing else to do. If you wish to remove the protection eventually, you will be able to see all the sites which are protected inside the same exact section of the Control Panel with a Delete button next to each one of them.
Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers
If you have a semi-dedicated server account with us and you discover that someone has hotlinked any of your images, you should use the security tool we have designed and integrated into our in-house built Hepsia hosting Control Panel. When you switch on this function, a server-generated image shall appear on the third-party Internet site as a substitute for your actual images. You will only have to go to the Hotlink Protection section inside the Control Panel and pick the domain or subdomain your site uses from a practical drop-down menu - it is as simple 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 as a whole. Deactivating the function is as simple - return to the same section, check the box next to the particular website and then press the Delete button.