Hotlinking, which is sometimes referred to as bandwidth theft as well, refers to linking to images that are on another Internet site. Simply, if you have a website with some images on it, somebody else could also create a site and as opposed to using their own images, they may put links straight to your images. Even though this might not be such a serious problem if you have a smaller personal website, it shall be something rather serious if the images are copyrighted, as somebody could be aiming to copy your website and cheat people. If your website hosting plan has a restricted monthly bandwidth quota, you can exhaust your resources without getting actual visitors, because the traffic shall be consumed by the other site. This is why you need to think about preserving your content from being hotlinked - not simply images, but also documents, because in rare occasions other kinds of files are linked as well.

Hotlinking Protection in Web Hosting

It won't require more than several mouse clicks to switch on the hotlink protection feature that we provide even if this is the first hosting account that you use, since all our Linux web hosting services come with a simple and user-friendly tool that will permit you to prevent direct links to your content. The tool is a component of our innovative Hepsia CP, so it provides the exact same intuitive point & click interface. After you log in to your account’s back office and visit the Hotlink Protection section, you will simply have to select the domain or subdomain that you want to protect from a drop-down list. If you wish to switch on this function only for a particular site folder, you've got the option to do that. All Internet sites with enabled hotlink protection shall appear inside this section and you can easily disable the service by selecting the checkbox next to the given Internet site and clicking on the Delete button.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting

We offer an uncomplicated solution to shield your content and even if you are not quite tech-savvy, you'll be able to benefit from it with just a few mouse clicks. The usual way for you to enable server-side hotlink security is to generate an .htaccess file and to include a couple of directives in it. With the tool that you will find inside the Hepsia Control Panel, supplied with all semi-dedicated server accounts, you will only have to select the Internet site that you would like to protect and our system will set up the .htaccess file for you, including all the needed content inside it. You can also use this feature for just one folder instead of the whole Internet site - you just need to specify where the .htaccess file should be created. If you no longer need the hotlink security to be active, you can disable it with a single click through the very same section of your Control Panel.