Hotlinking is a term that represents the addition of images on a given website using direct links. If you have site A, for example, and an individual creates site B and wishes to add a number of images from your Internet site, they can either save the images and then add them on their website or they may simply put links on their website to the images on yours. Thus, when a visitor opens website B, site B will steal traffic from your own Internet site A, because the images will load directly from your website hosting account. This technique is oftentimes used for documents and other types of files too. If you want to prevent 3rd parties from stealing your content and from using your own website hosting account’s resources, you'll be able to limit their ability to use direct links to your files on their Internet sites.
Hotlinking Protection in Website Hosting
You can easily secure your content if you create an .htaccess file within the website’s root folder, but in case you don't have previous experience, you should use our hotlink protection tool. The latter is supplied with all website hosting package deals we offer and could be accessed through the in-house built Hepsia Control Panel. The protection can be turned on in 2 basic steps - select the domain or subdomain for the site in question, then pick if our system should create the .htaccess file within the primary folder or in a subfolder and you shall be ready. You don't need any programming expertise or any experience with this type of matters, because there shall be nothing else to do. If you would like to disable the protection at some time, you will be able to see all of the sites that are protected within the same section of the Control Panel with a Delete button alongside each one of them.
Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers
We provide a simple solution to secure your whole content and even if you are not very tech-savvy, you are able to take advantage of it with a couple of mouse clicks. The conventional approach to activate server-side hotlink security is to generate an .htaccess file and to add a number of directives in it. With the tool that you will find in the Hepsia Control Panel, included with all semi-dedicated server accounts, you'll simply need to choose the site that you intend to protect and our system will set up the .htaccess file for you, adding all the needed content in it. You may also use this feature for just one folder rather than the whole site - you just have to specify where the .htaccess file has to be created. If you no longer want the hotlink protection to be enabled, you could deactivate it with just one click via the same section of your CP.