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 that you have and rather than downloading them from your Internet site and then uploading them to their own Internet site, they may simply put links directly to your Internet site. In this way, when a visitor opens their Internet site, the images will be loaded from your account, thus stealing from your own monthly traffic quota, in addition to the copyright problems that may appear or that somebody can be trying to trick people into thinking that they are in fact on your site. In rare occasions, documents and other kinds of files could also be linked in the exact same way. To stop this from happening and to avoid this type of situations, you could activate hotlink protection for your site.
Hotlinking Protection in Shared Website Hosting
It shall not require more than a number of mouse clicks to activate the hotlink protection function we offer even if this is the very first website hosting account that you use, due to the fact that all our shared website hosting plans feature a simple and easy-to-use tool that will permit you to prevent direct links to your content. The tool is part of our innovative Hepsia Control Panel, so it features the same exact easy-to-use point & click interface. As soon as you log in to your account’s back office and go to the Hotlink Protection section, you'll only have to choose the domain or subdomain that you'd like to protect from a drop-down list. If you wish to switch on this function only for a certain site folder, you've got the option to do that. All websites with active hotlink protection will appear within this section and you can easily disable the service by selecting the checkbox next to the given Internet site and pressing the Delete button.
Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers
If you have a semi-dedicated server account with our company and you discover that somebody has hotlinked any of your images, you may use the security tool we have created and included in our in-house built Hepsia hosting Control Panel. As soon as you switch on this function, a server-generated image shall appear on the third-party Internet site rather than your real images. You will only need to navigate to the Hotlink Protection section inside the Control Panel and pick the domain or subdomain that your website uses from a practical drop-down menu - it's as easy as that. When necessary, you will also have the option to switch on the function just for a specific subfolder and not for the website altogether. Deactivating the feature is as effortless - go back to the same section, check the box beside the given website and then click on the Delete button.