Hotlinking is a term that describes the inclusion of images on a particular website through direct links. In case you have site A, for example, and somebody creates website B and wants to include a few images from your website, they can either save the images and then include them on their site or they may simply put links on their Internet site to the images on yours. Thus, whenever a visitor opens Internet site B, site B will steal traffic from your own site A, since the images will load directly from your website hosting account. This approach is sometimes used for documents and other types of files also. If you wish to prevent 3rd parties from stealing your content and from using your own hosting account’s resources, you'll be able to limit their capability to use direct links to your files on their sites.

Hotlinking Protection in Website Hosting

It will not require more than a few clicks to enable the hotlink protection feature we provide even if this is the very first web hosting account you use, as all of our website hosting include a rather simple and user-friendly tool that will permit you to stop direct links to your content. The tool is a component of our innovative Hepsia Control Panel, so it features the very same intuitive point & click interface. Once you log in to your account’s back office and navigate to the Hotlink Protection section, you will simply have to pick the domain or subdomain that you'd like to secure from a drop-down list. If you'd like to switch on this function only for a specific site folder, you will have the option to do that. All Internet sites with active hotlink protection shall appear inside this section and you can deactivate the service by selecting the checkbox next to the given site and clicking on the Delete button.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers

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 which we have designed and included in our in-house built Hepsia hosting CP. When you enable this option, a server-generated image will appear on the third-party Internet site in place of your actual images. You will only have to check out the Hotlink Protection section within the Control Panel and choose the domain or subdomain that your site uses from a handy drop-down menu - it is as simple as that. When necessary, you'll also have the option to switch on the function only for a specific subfolder and not for the website as a whole. Deactivating the feature is equally easy - get back to exactly the same section, check the box alongside the given Internet site and then press the Delete button.