Hotlinking, which is oftentimes termed bandwidth theft too, refers to linking to images which are on another site. Basically, if you have a site with some images on it, another person can also build a website and rather than using their own images, they may put links straight to your images. Even though this may not be such a serious problem if you have a small personal Internet site, it will be something rather serious if the images are copyrighted, because somebody can be aiming to copy your Internet site and trick people. If your web hosting package deal has a restricted monthly bandwidth quota, you could use up all your resources without getting legitimate visitors, because the traffic will be consumed by the other site. This is the reason why you should think about protecting your content from being hotlinked - not simply images, but also documents, since in rare occasions other kinds of files are linked as well.

Hotlinking Protection in Hosting

It won't take more than several mouse clicks to activate the hotlink security function we provide even if this is the 1st web hosting account which you use, as all our Linux hosting include a rather simple and user-friendly tool that will allow you to stop direct links to your content. The tool is an element of our advanced Hepsia Control Panel, so it has the same exact easy-to-use point-and-click interface. After you log in to your account’s back office and go to the Hotlink Protection section, you will simply need to select the domain or subdomain that you would like to secure from a drop-down list. If you wish to activate this function only for a particular Internet site folder, you've got the option to do that. All Internet sites with enabled hotlink protection will appear inside this section and you can deactivate the service by selecting the checkbox next to the given Internet site and clicking on the Delete button.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers

We offer an effective solution to shield your whole content and even if you are not very tech-savvy, you could benefit from it with just a few mouse clicks. The standard way to enable server-side hotlink security is to generate an .htaccess file and to add a few directives within it. With the tool which you will find in the Hepsia CP, supplied with all semi-dedicated server accounts, you will only need to select the site which you intend to secure and our system shall create the .htaccess file for you, adding all the essential content within it. You may also use this feature for just one folder rather than the whole Internet site - you just need to specify where the .htaccess file needs to be set up. If you no longer require the hotlink security to be active, you could disable it with just one mouse click from the same exact section of your Control Panel.