Hotlinking, which is sometimes labeled bandwidth theft too, identifies linking to images which are on another Internet site. Basically, if you have an Internet site with some images on it, someone else can also create a site and rather than using their own images, they can put links directly to your images. Even though this may not be such a big problem if you have a small personal website, it can be something quite serious if the images are copyrighted, due to the fact that somebody may be attempting to copy your Internet site and deceive people. If your website hosting package deal has a limited monthly bandwidth quota, you may exhaust your resources without getting actual website visitors, due to the fact that the traffic will be consumed by the other site. This is why you should consider protecting your content from being hotlinked - not simply images, but also files, since in rare occasions other kinds of files are linked as well.

Hotlinking Protection in Cloud Website Hosting

There is a way of avoiding the hotlinking of your images by using an .htaccess file inside the website’s root directory, but if you are not very tech-savvy, we also give you a very easy-to-work-with tool that will permit you to activate the protection with several mouse clicks and without entering any code. The tool may be accessed through the Hepsia CP, offered with all our Linux cloud website hosting packages and the only two things that you will need to pick are a domain/subdomain from a drop-down menu and if the protection should be activated for the main Internet site folder or for some subfolder. Our system shall do the rest, so you shall not need to do anything else by hand on your end. If you decide to disable the hotlink protection option at some point, you'll only have to go back to the same section, to mark the checkbox beside it and to press the Delete button.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting

We provide you with an uncomplicated solution to protect your content and even if you are not very tech-savvy, you are able to take advantage of it with just a few clicks. The common approach to enable server-side hotlink protection is to create an .htaccess file and to include a couple of directives inside it. With the tool which you'll discover inside the Hepsia CP, provided with all of the semi-dedicated server accounts, you will simply need to select the Internet site which you want to secure and our system will create the .htaccess file for you, adding all of the needed content within it. You may also use this option for only one folder rather than the entire Internet site - you just have to specify where the .htaccess file has to be created. If you no longer require the hotlink security to be active, you can deactivate it with one mouse click from the same section of your CP.