Hotlinking is a widely accepted Internet expression for linking to another website’s images. To put it differently, if you develop an Internet site, someone else may want to use the images which you have and instead of downloading them from your website and then uploading them to their own site, they may simply put links to your Internet site. That way, whenever a visitor opens their Internet site, the images will be loaded from your account, thus stealing from your own monthly traffic quota, not to mention the copyright problems which can develop or that somebody may be trying to trick people into thinking that they're in fact on your site. In rare occasions, documents and other sorts of files can also be linked in the exact same way. To prevent this from happening and to avoid this sort of situations, you may activate hotlink protection for your site.
Hotlinking Protection in Shared Web Hosting
It won't require more than several clicks to switch on the hotlink protection function we offer even if this is the very first web hosting account which you use, because all of our shared web hosting include a quite simple and easy-to-use tool that will enable you to stop direct links to your content. The tool is a component of our revolutionary Hepsia Control Panel, so it features the same exact intuitive point & click interface. After you log in to your account’s back office and navigate to the Hotlink Protection section, you'll simply have to pick the domain or subdomain that you want to protect from a drop-down list. If you want to enable this function only for a certain website folder, you will have the option to do that. All sites with active hotlink protection will appear within this section and you will be able to turn off the service by selecting the checkbox beside the given 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 discover that somebody has hotlinked any of your images, you can use the security tool which we have created and included in our in-house built Hepsia hosting CP. Once you enable this function, a server-generated image will appear on the third-party website as a substitute for your real images. You'll only need to visit the Hotlink Protection section within the Control Panel and choose the domain or subdomain that your website uses from a convenient drop-down menu - it's as basic as that. If required, you'll also have the option to switch on the function for a particular subfolder and not for the website altogether. Deactivating the feature is equally effortless - return to the exact same section, check the box beside the specific website and then click on the Delete button.