Hotlinking is a widely accepted Internet term for linking to another website’s images. To put it differently, if you create a site, someone 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 straight to your site. In this way, every time a visitor opens their site, the images will be loaded from your account, consequently stealing from your own monthly traffic quota, in addition to the copyright issues which can present themselves or that someone can be trying to deceive people into thinking that they're in fact on your site. In rare situations, documents and other types of files may also be linked in the exact same way. To stop this from happening and to avoid this type of situations, you can permit hotlink protection for your site.
Hotlinking Protection in Hosting
It will not take more than a few mouse clicks to activate the hotlink protection function we provide even if this is the 1st web hosting account you use, as all our hosting come with a quite simple and user-friendly tool that will permit you to stop direct links to your content. The tool is a component of our advanced Hepsia CP, so it offers the exact same intuitive point-and-click interface. When you log in to your account’s back office and go to the Hotlink Protection section, you'll only have to pick the domain or subdomain that you'd like to secure from a drop-down list. If you'd like to activate this service only for a certain site folder, you've got the option to do that. All sites with active hotlink protection shall appear inside this section and you will be able to disable the service by selecting the checkbox beside the given 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 included in our in-house built Hepsia hosting Control Panel. Once you switch on this function, a server-generated image shall appear on the third-party Internet site as a substitute for your real images. You'll only have to visit the Hotlink Protection section inside the CP and select the domain or subdomain that your website uses from a convenient drop-down menu - it is as easy as that. If required, you'll also have the option to enable the function just for a specific subfolder and not for the website in general. Deactivating the feature is equally easy - get back to the very same section, check the box alongside the specific site and then click on the Delete button.