Hotlinking is a largely accepted Internet expression for linking to another website’s images. Quite simply, if you create a website, somebody else may want to use the images that you have and instead of downloading them from your Internet site and then uploading them to their own site, they may simply put links straight to your website. In this way, each time a visitor opens their website, the images will be loaded from your account, consequently stealing from your own monthly traffic quota, along with the copyright issues that can develop or that someone may be trying to deceive people into thinking that they're in fact on your Internet site. In rare occasions, documents and other kinds of files can also be linked in the same exact way. To stop this from happening and to avoid such situations, you could permit hotlink protection for your site.
Hotlinking Protection in Cloud Hosting
You can easily shield your content if you set up an .htaccess file within the website’s root folder, but just in case you do not have previous experience, you should use our hotlink protection tool. The latter is included with all cloud hosting plans we offer and can be accessed using the in-house built Hepsia CP. The protection can be enabled in two easy steps - choose the domain or subdomain for the site in question, then choose if our system should set up the .htaccess file within the main folder or within a subfolder and you'll be good to go. You do not need any coding capabilities or any experience with this kind of matters, as there will be nothing else to do. If you would like to disable the protection at some time, you can see all of the websites that are protected in the same section of the Control Panel with a Delete button next to each of them.
Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting
If you have a semi-dedicated server account with us and you find out that another person has hotlinked any of your images, you may use the security tool we've created and incorporated into our in-house built Hepsia hosting CP. Once you activate this option, a server-generated image shall appear on the third-party site in place of your actual images. You will only need to check out the Hotlink Protection section within the Control Panel and pick the domain or subdomain which your Internet site uses from a practical drop-down menu - it's as elementary as that. When necessary, you will also have the option to enable the feature only for a specific subfolder and not for the website as a whole. Deactivating the protection is just as simple - return to the very same section, check the box alongside the given website and then click on the Delete button.