Hotlinking, which is oftentimes labeled bandwidth theft also, describes linking to images that are on another Internet site. Essentially, if you have a site with some images on it, another individual could also build a site and instead of using their own images, they could put links straight to your images. Although this might not be such a major issue if you have a small personal Internet site, it can be something very serious if the images are copyrighted, since someone can be attempting to copy your site and deceive people. If your hosting plan has a restricted monthly bandwidth quota, you can exhaust your resources without getting real website visitors, because the traffic will be consumed by the other Internet site. This is the reason why you should consider protecting your content from being hotlinked - not only images, but also files, since in rare occasions other sorts of files are linked too.

Hotlinking Protection in Website Hosting

It won't require more than several mouse clicks to enable the hotlink protection function which we offer even if this is the first web hosting account you use, since all of our Linux website hosting include a quite simple and easy-to-use tool that will permit you to prevent direct links to your content. The tool is part of our revolutionary Hepsia CP, so it has the same easy-to-use point-and-click interface. After you log in to your account’s back office and visit the Hotlink Protection section, you will simply have to choose the domain or subdomain you want to protect from a drop-down list. If you would like to enable this function only for a particular Internet site folder, you will have the option to do that. All sites with active hotlink protection will appear in this section and you could disable the service by selecting the checkbox alongside the given Internet site and pressing the Delete button.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting

If you don't want other individuals to use your images on their sites without your consent, you can easily switch on the hotlink protection feature, that is provided with all semi-dedicated server package deals. As an alternative to setting up an .htaccess file yourself inside the website folder and writing some code in it, which is the standard method to deny direct linking to files, you could use a really simple tool, which we've included in the Hepsia Control Panel. Using it, you'll simply have to select the website which has to be secured and our system shall do the rest. Optionally, you can make a decision if the .htaccess file will be generated straight inside the root folder or inside a subfolder, when you would like to activate the hotlink security feature just for some content and not for the whole site. Disabling it is just as effortless - you'll only have to mark the checkbox beside the specific Internet site and to click on the Delete button.