Hotlinking is a term that describes the addition of images on a given site via direct links. If you have site A, for instance, and a person creates website B and wishes to add a number of images from your website, they're able to either save the images and then add them on their Internet site or they could simply place links on their website to the images on yours. As a result, when a visitor opens website B, site B will steal traffic from your own website A, as the images will load straight from your website hosting account. This method is sometimes used for documents and other types of files too. If you want to prevent third parties from stealing your content and from using your own website hosting account’s resources, you can limit their capability to use direct links to your files on their websites.

Hotlinking Protection in Shared Hosting

It will not take more than a few clicks to switch on the hotlink security function that we offer you even if this is the first hosting account you use, because all our shared hosting service include a rather simple and easy-to-use tool that will permit you to stop direct links to your content. The tool is part of our innovative Hepsia Control Panel, so it provides the exact same intuitive point & click interface. Once you log in to your account’s back office and navigate to the Hotlink Protection section, you will only need to choose the domain or subdomain you want to secure from a drop-down list. If you'd like to switch on this function only for a particular website folder, you will have the option to do that. All websites with active hotlink protection will appear within this section and you can easily turn off the service by selecting the checkbox alongside the given Internet site and pressing the Delete button.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers

If you have a semi-dedicated server account with our company and you discover that another person has hotlinked any of your images, you can use the protection tool we've designed and included in our in-house built Hepsia hosting CP. As soon as you switch on this option, a server-generated image shall appear on the third-party Internet site in place of your real images. You'll only need to navigate to the Hotlink Protection section inside the Control Panel and choose the domain or subdomain your site uses from a convenient drop-down menu - it is as elementary as that. If needed, you'll also have the option to enable the function just for a specific subfolder and not for the website in its entirety. Deactivating the function is as easy - get back to the very same section, check the box beside the particular website and then press the Delete button.