Hotlinking is a largely accepted Internet expression for linking to another website’s images. To put it differently, if you build a website, another person may want to use the images you have and instead of downloading them from your Internet site and then uploading them to their own site, they may simply put links to your website. That way, when a visitor opens their Internet site, the images shall be loaded from your account, consequently stealing from your own monthly traffic quota, along with the copyright problems which could present themselves or that somebody can be trying to trick people into believing that they are actually on your site. In rare instances, documents and other kinds of files may also be linked in the very same way. To stop this from happening and to avoid this kind of situations, you may permit hotlink protection for your site.

Hotlinking Protection in Shared Hosting

You can easily secure your content if you create an .htaccess file inside the website’s root folder, but just in case you don't have previous experience, you should use our hotlink protection tool. The latter comes with all shared hosting package deals which we offer and can be accessed via the in-house built Hepsia Control Panel. The protection may be turned on in two easy steps - choose the domain or subdomain for the site in question, then pick if our system should create the .htaccess file inside the main folder or inside a subfolder and you shall be all set. You don't require any coding capabilities or any experience with such matters, because there shall be nothing else to do. If you wish to disable the protection eventually, you can see all of the Internet sites which are protected in the exact same section of the CP with a Delete button next to each one of them.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting

If you create a semi-dedicated server account and you learn that another person is linking to your files without your authorization, you can easily cut them off by activating the hotlink protection function we offer you. While the regular way to do this is to create an .htaccess file, we've got a special tool which can do this automatically and you shall simply have to pick the website in question and to decide whether our system should create the necessary file within the primary folder or inside a subfolder. The tool is part of our custom made Hepsia CP and offers exactly the same user-friendly interface, so you'll be able to use it without any issues even when you have never used any web hosting service before. You could disable the hotlink protection function for any website/folder with a click through the exact same section.