Hotlinking is a widely accepted Internet expression for linking to another website’s images. Quite simply, if you create an Internet site, someone else may want to use the images which you have and instead of downloading them from your site and then uploading them to their own Internet site, they could simply put links to your website. That way, every time a visitor opens their Internet site, the images will be loaded from your account, thus stealing from your own monthly traffic quota, let alone the copyright problems which can arise or that someone could be trying to trick people into thinking that they are in fact on your site. In rare occasions, documents and other types of files could also be linked in the very same way. To stop this from happening and to avoid such situations, you may enable hotlink protection for your site.

Hotlinking Protection in Web Hosting

You can easily protect 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 need to use our hotlink protection tool. The latter is included with all web hosting plans which we offer and could be accessed via the in-house built Hepsia CP. The protection may be turned on in two basic steps - pick the domain or subdomain for the website in question, then pick if our system should create the .htaccess file within the main folder or inside a subfolder and you will be all set. You don't need any programming skills or any experience with such matters, since there shall be nothing else to do. If you want to remove the protection eventually, you will be able to see all the websites which are protected inside the same exact section of the CP with a Delete button beside each of them.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers

We provide you with an uncomplicated solution to protect your whole content and even if you aren't very tech-savvy, you can take full advantage of it with several mouse clicks. The conventional technique to activate server-side hotlink security is to generate an .htaccess file and to include a number of directives in it. With the tool that you'll find inside the Hepsia Control Panel, provided with all of the semi-dedicated server accounts, you'll only have to choose the Internet site that you intend to secure and our system will set up the .htaccess file for you, including all of the essential content inside it. You can even use this feature for just one folder instead of the entire Internet site - you just need to specify where the .htaccess file has to be set up. If you no longer require the hotlink protection to be switched on, you can deactivate it with just one mouse click via the very same section of your Control Panel.