Hotlinking is an expression which refers to the inclusion of images on a particular site through the use of direct links. In case you have site A, for instance, and someone creates site B and wants to add a few images from your Internet site, they could either save the images and then include them on their Internet site or they may simply place links on their website to the images on yours. Thus, every time a visitor opens website B, site B will steal traffic from your own site A, because the images shall load from your web hosting account. This process is typically used for documents and other types of files as well. If you would like to prevent 3rd parties from stealing your content and from using your own website hosting account’s resources, you are able to restrict their ability to use direct links to your files on their sites.
Hotlinking Protection in Cloud Website Hosting
You can easily shield your content if you set up an .htaccess file within the website’s root folder, but if you do not have previous experience, you need to use our hotlink protection tool. The latter comes with all cloud website hosting packages that we offer and could be accessed through the in-house built Hepsia Control Panel. The protection may be activated in two simple steps - pick the domain or subdomain for the website in question, then pick if our system should set up the .htaccess file inside the primary folder or within a subfolder and you'll be all set. You don't require any coding expertise or any experience with this type of matters, as there shall be nothing else to do. If you want to turn off the protection at some time, you could see all the sites that are protected in the very same section of the CP with a Delete button beside each of them.
Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting
If you do not want other individuals to use your images on their websites without your approval, you could easily switch on the hotlink security feature, that is supplied with all semi-dedicated server packages. As opposed to generating an .htaccess file by hand in the site folder and writing some code within it, which is the conventional method to deny direct linking to files, you may use a really simple tool, which we have incorporated into the Hepsia Control Panel. By using it, you will only need to pick the site that needs to be secured and our system will do the rest. Also, you can choose whether the .htaccess file should be created straight in the root folder or within a subfolder, when you'd like to activate the hotlink protection feature only for some content and not for the entire website. Deactivating it is just as effortless - you will only have to mark the checkbox next to the specific Internet site and to click on the Delete button.