Hotlinking, which is occasionally called bandwidth theft as well, refers to linking to images which are on another Internet site. In simple terms, if you have an Internet site with some images on it, someone else may also develop a website and instead of using their own images, they can put links directly to your images. Even though this might not be such a serious issue if you have a smaller personal Internet site, it shall be something really serious if the images are copyrighted, as someone might be aiming to copy your site and trick people. If your web hosting package has a limited monthly bandwidth quota, you could use up all your resources without getting actual website visitors, as the traffic will be consumed by the other Internet site. This is the reason why you need to consider protecting your content from being hotlinked - not only images, but also documents, since in rare occasions other sorts of files are linked as well.

Hotlinking Protection in Cloud Website Hosting

It will not require more than a few clicks to enable the hotlink protection feature which we offer you even if this is the 1st hosting account you use, because all of our Linux cloud website hosting plans come with a very simple and user-friendly 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 exact easy-to-use point-and-click interface. Once you log in to your account’s back office and go to the Hotlink Protection section, you will simply have to select the domain or subdomain that you'd like to secure from a drop-down list. If you want to activate this function only for a particular website folder, you've got the option to do that. All Internet sites with active hotlink protection will appear in this section and you could disable the service by selecting the checkbox next to the given site and pressing the Delete button.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers

If you do not want other individuals to use your images on their websites without your authorization, you could easily enable the hotlink protection feature, which is available with all semi-dedicated server package deals. Rather than generating an .htaccess file by hand within the Internet site folder and writing some code in it, which is the traditional method to deny direct linking to files, you can use an exceptionally simple tool, which we've included in the Hepsia CP. From it, you will simply need to select the Internet site that needs to be protected and our system will do the rest. Optionally, you can determine if the .htaccess file needs to be generated directly inside the root folder or within a subfolder, in case you want to activate the hotlink protection feature just for some content and not for the entire website. Disabling it is just as effortless - you'll simply have to mark the checkbox alongside the specific website and to click on the Delete button.