Hotlinking is a widely accepted Internet expression for linking to another website’s images. In other words, if you create an Internet site, somebody else may want to use the images 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 site. That way, when a visitor opens their Internet site, the images will be loaded from your account, thus stealing from your own monthly traffic quota, along with the copyright problems that may present themselves or that somebody can be trying to deceive people into thinking that they're actually on your site. In rare occasions, documents and other sorts of files can also be linked in the exact same way. To stop this from happening and to avoid this sort of situations, you may permit hotlink protection for your Internet site.
Hotlinking Protection in Cloud Hosting
There's a simple way to avoid the hotlinking of your images through an .htaccess file inside the website’s root directory, but if you are not very tech-savvy, we furthermore offer a very easy-to-use tool that shall permit you to activate the protection with several clicks and without writing any code. The tool could be accessed through the Hepsia CP, offered with all our Linux cloud packages and the only two things that you'll need to select are a domain/subdomain from a drop-down menu and if the protection has to be activated for the main website folder or for some subfolder. Our system will do the rest, so you will not need to do anything else by hand on your end. If you decide to turn off the hotlink protection option at some point, you'll only have to return to the exact same section, to mark the checkbox beside it and to click on the Delete button.
Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting
If you don't want other people to use your images on their websites without your authorization, you may easily activate the hotlink security function, that is offered with all semi-dedicated server package deals. As opposed to generating an .htaccess file manually inside the website folder and writing some code in it, which is the common approach to deny direct linking to files, you can use an exceptionally simple tool, that we have included in the Hepsia Control Panel. Using it, you'll only have to select the site that should be secured and our system shall do the rest. Additionally, you can choose whether the .htaccess file should be created directly inside the root folder or inside a subfolder, if you would like to activate the hotlink protection function only for some content and not for the entire Internet site. Deactivating it is just as simple - you'll simply have to mark the checkbox next to the particular Internet site and to click on the Delete button.