Hotlinking is an expression that identifies the addition of images on a given Internet site through the use of direct links. In case you have website A, for instance, and a person creates website B and wishes to add a couple of images from your Internet site, they can either save the images and then include them on their site or they could simply put links on their website to the images on yours. As a result, whenever a visitor opens Internet site B, site B will steal traffic from your own site A, since the images shall load from your hosting account. This technique is oftentimes used for documents and other types of files also. If you want to prevent third 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 sites.

Hotlinking Protection in Cloud Website Hosting

It won't take more than a couple of clicks to switch on the hotlink protection function that we offer you even if this is the very first hosting account that you use, because all our cloud website hosting plans include a very simple and easy-to-use tool that will permit you to stop direct links to your content. The tool is a component of our innovative Hepsia Control Panel, so it features the exact same easy-to-use point & click interface. Once you log in to your account’s back office and navigate to the Hotlink Protection section, you will only have to pick the domain or subdomain that you want to secure from a drop-down list. If you'd like to enable this function only for a certain Internet site folder, you will have the option to do that. All Internet sites with enabled hotlink protection will appear in this section and you can easily deactivate the service by selecting the checkbox beside the given website and pressing the Delete button.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers

If you have a semi-dedicated server account with us and you find out that somebody has hotlinked any of your images, you may use the security tool which we have created and included in our in-house built Hepsia hosting CP. When you enable this option, a server-generated image will appear on the third-party site instead of your real images. You'll only have to navigate to the Hotlink Protection section within the Control Panel and choose the domain or subdomain that your Internet site uses from a practical drop-down menu - it is as basic as that. If required, you shall also have the option to switch on the feature just for a specific subfolder and not for the website as a whole. Deactivating the feature is just as easy - get back to exactly the same section, check the box next to the particular site and then click on the Delete button.