Hotlinking is an expression that describes the inclusion of images on a given site using direct links. In case you have site A, for example, and someone creates site B and wants to add a couple of images from your site, they're able to either save the images and then add them on their site or they could simply put links on their Internet site to the images on yours. Subsequently, every time a visitor opens website B, site B will steal traffic from your own site A, as the images shall load straight from your hosting account. This method is typically used for documents and other sorts of files also. If you want to prevent 3rd parties from stealing your content and from using your own web hosting account’s resources, you can restrict their ability to use direct links to your files on their Internet sites.
Hotlinking Protection in Hosting
You can easily secure your content if you generate an .htaccess file within the website’s root folder, but in case you do not have previous experience, you can use our hotlink protection tool. The latter comes with all hosting plans we offer and can be accessed via the in-house built Hepsia CP. The protection can be enabled in 2 basic steps - pick the domain or subdomain for the site in question, then select if our system should set up the .htaccess file in the primary folder or inside a subfolder and you will be good to go. You don't need any coding expertise or any experience with this sort of matters, because there will be nothing else to do. If you would like to remove the protection at some point, you will be able to see all of the Internet sites that are protected inside the same exact section of the CP with a Delete button next to each of them.
Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers
We provide an effective solution to secure your whole content and even if you are not really tech-savvy, you can take full advantage of it with a couple of clicks. The conventional technique to enable server-side hotlink protection is to set up an .htaccess file and to include a couple of directives within it. With the tool that you will find within the Hepsia CP, supplied with all semi-dedicated server accounts, you'll simply have to select the Internet site which you need to secure and our system will create the .htaccess file for you, including all the required content in it. You can even use this feature for just one folder rather than the whole site - you just need to specify where the .htaccess file needs to be set up. If you no longer require the hotlink protection to be active, you may disable it with a single click through the same exact section of your Control Panel.