Hotlinking, which is sometimes termed bandwidth theft too, describes linking to images that are on another Internet site. Basically, if you have a website with some images on it, some other person may also create a site and rather than using their own images, they can put links directly to your images. Even though this might not be such a serious issue if you have a smaller personal website, it shall be something rather serious if the images are copyrighted, due to the fact that somebody might be trying to copy your website and trick people. If your hosting plan has a restricted monthly bandwidth quota, you could run out of resources without getting real site visitors, simply because the traffic shall be consumed by the other Internet site. This is the reason why you need to consider shielding your content from being hotlinked - not just images, but also documents, as in rare occasions other types of files are linked too.

Hotlinking Protection in Website Hosting

Due to the fact that our Linux website hosting include a simple and convenient hotlink protection tool, you shall be able to shield your content from displaying on third-party sites with literally no more than a couple of clicks, even if you do not have much experience with this type of matters. The tool comes with the Hepsia hosting CP and once you open it, you will only have to select the domain or subdomain that you would like to protect. Optionally, you may also select if the hotlink protection will be enabled for the default domain root folder or just for a subfolder. You will not have to do anything else, due to the fact that our system shall create an .htaccess file automatically inside the desired location and shall add the required code within it. All websites with active hotlink protection shall be listed inside the exact same section, so you can easily disable this service for each of them with just a click.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting

If you have a semi-dedicated server account with us and you find out that someone has hotlinked any of your images, you may use the protection tool that we have designed and included in our in-house built Hepsia hosting CP. As soon as you switch on this function, a server-generated image will appear on the third-party Internet site as a substitute for your actual images. You will only have to navigate to the Hotlink Protection section inside the Control Panel and choose the domain or subdomain that your site uses from a convenient drop-down menu - it's as simple as that. If necessary, you'll also have the option to enable the function only for a particular subfolder and not for the website in its entirety. Deactivating the protection is equally simple - get back to the very same section, check the box beside the given website and then click on the Delete button.