Hotlinking is a widely accepted Internet expression for linking to another website’s images. In other words, if you create a site, somebody else may want to use the images which you have and instead of downloading them from your site and then uploading them to their Internet site, they may simply put links straight to your site. This way, every time a visitor opens their Internet site, the images will be loaded from your account, thus stealing from your own monthly traffic quota, in addition to the copyright problems which may arise or that someone can be trying to deceive people into thinking that they are in fact on your site. In rare occasions, 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 may permit hotlink protection for your Internet site.
Hotlinking Protection in Shared Website Hosting
It shall not require more than a couple of mouse clicks to switch on the hotlink protection function that we provide even if this is the first web hosting account that you use, as all of our shared website hosting plans feature a very simple and easy to work with tool that will allow you to stop direct links to your content. The tool is an element of our innovative Hepsia Control Panel, so it features the exact same intuitive point-and-click interface. When you log in to your account’s back office and navigate to the Hotlink Protection section, you will simply need to pick the domain or subdomain that you'd like to protect from a drop-down list. If you'd like to activate this feature only for a certain site folder, you will have the option to do that. All websites with enabled hotlink protection shall appear inside this section and you could disable the service by selecting the checkbox next to the given website and pressing the Delete button.
Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers
If you have a semi-dedicated server account with us and you notice that another person 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. Whenever you switch on this feature, a server-generated image shall appear on the third-party site instead of your real images. You'll only have to visit the Hotlink Protection section in the Control Panel and select the domain or subdomain your Internet site uses from a practical drop-down menu - it's as easy as that. If needed, you will also have the option to switch on the function just for a specific subfolder and not for the website in general. Deactivating the function is just as effortless - go back to exactly the same section, check the box alongside the given site and then click on the Delete button.