Hotlinking is an expression that identifies the addition of images on a particular site through the use of direct links. When you have site A, for example, and an individual creates site B and wants to include a few images from your website, they are able to either save the images and then add them on their website or they can simply place links on their website to the images on yours. Thus, each time a visitor opens site B, site B will steal traffic from your own site A, as the images shall load directly from your web hosting account. This process is typically used for documents and other kinds of files too. If you would like to prevent 3rd parties from stealing your content and from using your own hosting account’s resources, you are able to limit their ability to use direct links to your files on their Internet sites.
Hotlinking Protection in Web Hosting
You can easily secure your content if you set up an .htaccess file in the website’s root folder, but in case you don't have previous experience, you could use our hotlink protection tool. The latter is provided with all web hosting plans we offer and could be accessed through the in-house built Hepsia Control Panel. The protection can be activated in 2 simple steps - choose the domain or subdomain for the website in question, then choose if our system should create the .htaccess file within the primary folder or in a subfolder and you will be all set. You don't require any coding expertise or any experience with this sort of matters, due to the fact that there will be nothing else to do. If you'd like to turn off the protection at some point, you could see all the Internet sites that are protected inside the exact same section of the Control Panel with a Delete button next to each of them.
Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers
If you create a semi-dedicated server account and you find out that someone is linking to your files without your approval, you may easily cut them off by switching on the hotlink protection function that we offer. While the standard technique of doing this is to generate an .htaccess file, we have a special tool which can do this automatically and you will only need to pick the site in question and to choose whether our system should generate the necessary file in the main folder or in a subfolder. The tool is part of our customized Hepsia Control Panel and features the same user-friendly interface, so you'll be able to use it with no problems even when you have never used any website hosting service before. You can switch off the hotlink security function for any website/folder with a mouse click through exactly the same section.