Hotlinking is a widely accepted Internet phrase for linking to another website’s images. Basically, if you develop a site, another person may want to use the images you have and instead of downloading them from your website and then uploading them to their Internet site, they could simply put links to your Internet site. That way, when a visitor opens their Internet site, the images will be loaded from your account, consequently stealing from your own monthly traffic quota, along with the copyright issues that may present themselves or that somebody may be trying to deceive people into thinking that they're actually on your Internet site. In rare instances, documents and other kinds of files could also be linked in the very same way. To prevent this from happening and to avoid this kind of situations, you may activate hotlink protection for your Internet site.

Hotlinking Protection in Shared Hosting

It won't take more than several clicks to switch on the hotlink protection function we provide even if this is the very first hosting account that you use, since all of our shared plans include a quite simple and user-friendly tool that will allow you to stop direct links to your content. The tool is an element of our advanced Hepsia Control Panel, so it offers the same intuitive point-and-click interface. As soon as you log in to your account’s back office and go to the Hotlink Protection section, you will simply need to pick the domain or subdomain that you'd like to secure from a drop-down list. If you would like to activate this service only for a specific website folder, you will have the option to do that. All sites with active hotlink protection will appear within this section and you can easily deactivate the service by selecting the checkbox next to the given site and pressing the Delete button.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers

If you don't want others to use your images on their websites without your permission, you could easily switch on the hotlink protection feature, which is supplied with all semi-dedicated server package deals. As opposed to setting up an .htaccess file by hand inside the Internet site folder and writing some code within it, which is the common method to deny direct linking to files, you may use a very simple tool, that we have incorporated into the Hepsia CP. Using it, you'll only have to pick the Internet site which needs to be protected and our system shall do the rest. Moreover, you can determine whether the .htaccess file should be set up directly in the root folder or within a subfolder, in case you'd like to activate the hotlink protection feature only for some content and not for the entire website. Deactivating it is just as simple - you will simply have to mark the checkbox beside the specific website and to click on the Delete button.