Hotlinking is a largely accepted Internet term for linking to another website’s images. Basically, if you develop a site, someone else may want to use the images that you have and instead of downloading them from your website and then uploading them to their own Internet site, they can simply put links directly to your website. This way, each time a visitor opens their website, the images will be loaded from your account, consequently stealing from your own monthly traffic quota, in addition to the copyright problems that may arise or that somebody can be trying to trick people into believing that they are actually on your Internet site. In rare situations, documents and other sorts of files can also be linked in the same exact way. To stop this from happening and to avoid this type of situations, you could permit hotlink protection for your site.

Hotlinking Protection in Cloud Hosting

It will not require more than a number of mouse clicks to enable the hotlink security feature which we offer you even if this is the first hosting account you use, due to the fact that all our Linux cloud packages come with a simple and easy-to-use tool that will permit you to prevent direct links to your content. The tool is a component of our revolutionary Hepsia CP, so it has the same exact easy-to-use point-and-click interface. When you log in to your account’s back office and navigate to the Hotlink Protection section, you'll only need to choose the domain or subdomain that you would like to protect from a drop-down list. If you'd like to switch on this function only for a specific site folder, you've got the option to do that. All sites with enabled hotlink protection shall appear within this section and you can easily turn off the service by selecting the checkbox beside the given website and pressing the Delete button.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting

If you have a semi-dedicated server account with our company and you find out that another person has hotlinked any of your images, you can use the security tool we've created and incorporated into our in-house built Hepsia hosting Control Panel. Whenever you switch on this option, a server-generated image will appear on the third-party website rather than your real images. You'll only need to go to the Hotlink Protection section inside the CP and choose the domain or subdomain which your site uses from a handy drop-down menu - it is as basic as that. When necessary, you shall also have the option to enable the function for a particular subfolder and not for the website altogether. Deactivating the feature is equally effortless - get back to the very same section, check the box next to the particular website and then press the Delete button.