Hotlinking is an expression which identifies the addition of images on a given site using direct links. In case you have website A, for instance, and an individual creates site B and wants to include a couple of images from your website, they are able to either save the images and then include them on their website or they may simply place links on their website to the images on yours. Subsequently, every time a visitor opens website B, site B will steal traffic from your own website A, as the images shall load straight from your website hosting account. This method is usually used for documents and other types of files too. If you would like to prevent 3rd parties from stealing your content and from using your own website hosting account’s resources, you could limit their ability to use direct links to your files on their sites.

Hotlinking Protection in Shared Website Hosting

There's a simple way to avoid the hotlinking of your images by using an .htaccess file in the website’s root directory, but if you are not very tech-savvy, we additionally offer a very easy-to-use tool that will permit you to activate the protection with a couple of clicks and without entering any code. The tool could be accessed via the Hepsia Control Panel, included with all our Linux shared website hosting plans and the only two things which you will have to select are a domain/subdomain from a drop-down menu and if the protection needs to be enabled for the main website folder or for some subfolder. Our system will do the rest, so you will not need to do anything else manually on your end. If you want to disable the hotlink protection option sometime, you will simply have to go back to exactly the same section, to mark the checkbox beside it and to click on the Delete button.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers

We provide a simple solution to secure your content and even if you aren't quite tech-savvy, you can take advantage of it with just a few clicks. The usual technique to activate server-side hotlink security is to generate an .htaccess file and to add a couple of directives in it. With the tool that you will find in the Hepsia Control Panel, provided with all of the semi-dedicated server accounts, you will only need to select the site which you would like to secure and our system shall create the .htaccess file for you, adding all of the essential content inside it. You can even use this function for only one folder rather than the entire website - you just need to specify where the .htaccess file should be created. If you no longer need the hotlink protection to be enabled, you'll be able to deactivate it with just one mouse click from the very same section of your Control Panel.