Hotlinking, which is oftentimes labeled bandwidth theft too, describes linking to images that are on another Internet site. In simple terms, if you have an Internet site with some images on it, someone else could also develop a site and as opposed to using their own images, they can put links straight to your images. Although this might not be such a big problem if you have a smaller personal Internet site, it can be something very serious if the images are copyrighted, since somebody can be trying to copy your site and deceive people. If your web hosting package deal has a restricted monthly bandwidth quota, chances are you'll exhaust your resources without getting real site visitors, because the traffic will be consumed by the other website. That is why you should think about shielding your content from being hotlinked - not only images, but also documents, since in rare occasions other sorts of files are linked also.

Hotlinking Protection in Web Hosting

It will not take more than several clicks to enable the hotlink protection function that we provide even if this is the first website hosting account which you use, due to the fact that all of our web hosting plans include a simple and user-friendly tool that will permit you to stop direct links to your content. The tool is an element of our revolutionary Hepsia CP, so it has the same intuitive point & click interface. Once you log in to your account’s back office and go to the Hotlink Protection section, you will simply need to pick the domain or subdomain that you want to protect from a drop-down list. If you wish to activate this service only for a specific website folder, you will have the option to do that. All sites with active hotlink protection shall appear inside this section and you can turn off the service by selecting the checkbox alongside the given site and clicking on the Delete button.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers

We provide you with an effective solution to protect your content and even if you aren't very tech-savvy, you can take full advantage of it with a few clicks. The usual technique to activate server-side hotlink security is to set up an .htaccess file and to include a few directives inside it. With the tool that you'll discover in the Hepsia CP, supplied with all of the semi-dedicated server accounts, you'll only need to pick the site that you would like to secure and our system will set up the .htaccess file for you, including all the necessary content within it. You may also use this feature for just one folder as opposed to the whole Internet site - you just have to specify where the .htaccess file needs to be set up. If you no longer require the hotlink protection to be active, you can disable it with a single click from the very same section of your CP.