Hotlinking is a widely accepted Internet phrase for linking to another website’s images. Basically, if you develop a website, somebody else may want to use the images that you have and rather than downloading them from your site and then uploading them to their own Internet site, they could simply put links to your site. This way, each time a visitor opens their website, the images will be loaded from your account, thus stealing from your own monthly traffic quota, let alone the copyright problems that could develop or that someone may be trying to trick people into believing that they're actually on your website. In rare situations, documents and other types of files may also be linked in the exact same way. To prevent this from happening and to avoid such situations, you could activate hotlink protection for your Internet site.
Hotlinking Protection in Shared Hosting
It won't take more than several clicks to enable the hotlink security feature that we offer you even if this is the very first website hosting account that you use, because all our Linux shared hosting include a simple and easy to work with tool that will allow you to prevent direct links to your content. The tool is part of our advanced Hepsia CP, so it provides the same exact intuitive point-and-click interface. After you log in to your account’s back office and navigate to the Hotlink Protection section, you'll simply have to choose the domain or subdomain that you want to protect from a drop-down list. If you wish to activate this function only for a specific Internet site folder, you've got the option to do that. All sites with active hotlink protection will appear in this section and you can deactivate the service by selecting the checkbox next to the given Internet site and clicking on the Delete button.
Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting
If you have a semi-dedicated server account with us and you notice that someone has hotlinked any of your images, you can use the protection tool which we have developed and included in our in-house built Hepsia hosting CP. As soon as you enable this option, a server-generated image shall appear on the third-party Internet site as a substitute for your real images. You'll only have to check out the Hotlink Protection section in the Control Panel and pick the domain or subdomain which your site uses from a convenient drop-down menu - it's as easy as that. If required, you'll also have the option to activate the feature for a particular subfolder and not for the website as a whole. Deactivating the function is as effortless - go back to the very same section, check the box beside the specific Internet site and then click on the Delete button.