Hotlinking is an expression which identifies the addition of images on a given Internet site by using direct links. If you have site A, for example, and somebody creates site B and wishes to add a number of images from your site, they could either save the images and then include them on their Internet site or they could simply put links on their Internet site to the images on yours. As a result, when a visitor opens site B, site B will steal traffic from your own site A, as the images will load straight from your website hosting account. This approach is usually used for documents and other sorts of files also. If you would like to prevent third parties from stealing your content and from using your own hosting account’s resources, you could limit their capability to use direct links to your files on their sites.
Hotlinking Protection in Web Hosting
You can easily shield your content if you create an .htaccess file in the website’s root folder, but in case that you do not have previous experience, you can use our hotlink protection tool. The latter is provided with all web hosting packages which we offer and can be accessed through the in-house built Hepsia Control Panel. The protection could be turned on in two basic steps - pick the domain or subdomain for the site in question, then pick if our system should set up the .htaccess file in the primary folder or inside a subfolder and you will be all set. You don't need any programming expertise or any experience with this sort of matters, since there shall be nothing else to do. If you wish to disable the protection at some time, you could see all of the Internet sites that are protected in the very same section of the CP with a Delete button beside each one of them.
Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers
We offer an uncomplicated solution to shield your whole content and even if you are not very tech-savvy, you can benefit from it with several mouse clicks. The usual way for you to turn on server-side hotlink security is to generate an .htaccess file and to add a few directives within it. With the tool that you'll discover within the Hepsia Control Panel, which comes with all of the semi-dedicated server accounts, you'll simply need to select the Internet site which you want to protect and our system shall set up the .htaccess file for you, adding all the necessary content inside it. You can even use this option for only one folder as opposed to 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 enabled, you can deactivate it with just one click from the same exact section of your Control Panel.