Hotlinking is a largely accepted Internet term for linking to another website’s images. Basically, if you build a site, another person may want to use the images that you have and rather than downloading them from your website and then uploading them to their own Internet site, they could simply put links straight to your site. In this way, every time a visitor opens their website, the images shall be loaded from your account, as a result stealing from your own monthly traffic quota, along with the copyright problems which can arise or that someone may be trying to trick people into believing that they're actually on your Internet site. In rare instances, documents and other types of files could also be linked in the same exact way. To prevent this from happening and to avoid this sort of situations, you could permit hotlink protection for your website.

Hotlinking Protection in Web Hosting

It won't require more than a number of clicks to enable the hotlink security function we offer even if this is the first web hosting account you use, due to the fact that all our web hosting plans feature a rather simple and easy-to-use tool that will enable you to stop direct links to your content. The tool is an element of our innovative Hepsia Control Panel, so it has the same exact intuitive point & click interface. After you log in to your account’s back office and go to the Hotlink Protection section, you will only have to select the domain or subdomain that you would like to protect from a drop-down list. If you would like to switch on this feature only for a certain website folder, you've got the option to do that. All Internet sites with enabled hotlink protection shall appear inside this section and you could turn off the service by selecting the checkbox alongside the given Internet site and clicking on the Delete button.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers

If you have a semi-dedicated server account with us and you notice that someone has hotlinked any of your images, you may use the protection tool we have developed and incorporated into our in-house built Hepsia hosting CP. As soon as you switch on this feature, a server-generated image will appear on the third-party website rather than your real images. You will only need to navigate to the Hotlink Protection section in the CP and select the domain or subdomain your site uses from a convenient drop-down menu - it's as simple as that. If needed, you will also have the option to activate the feature for a particular subfolder and not for the website altogether. Deactivating the protection is as easy - return to exactly the same section, check the box next to the given site and then click on the Delete button.