Hotlinking, which is oftentimes referred to as bandwidth theft also, identifies linking to images which are on another Internet site. Basically, if you have an Internet site with some images on it, another person can also develop a website and instead of using their own images, they can put links directly to your images. While this might not be such a big problem if you have a small personal website, it'll be something really serious if the images are copyrighted, as somebody can be trying to copy your Internet site and deceive people. If your website hosting plan has a restricted monthly bandwidth quota, you will use up all your resources without getting actual visitors, due to the fact that the traffic shall be consumed by the other site. This is the reason why you should think about preserving your content from being hotlinked - not simply images, but also files, as in rare occasions other sorts of files are linked also.

Hotlinking Protection in Shared Web Hosting

It shall not require more than a number of clicks to switch on the hotlink protection function that we offer even if this is the 1st website hosting account that you use, because all our Linux shared web hosting packages feature a simple and easy-to-use tool that will permit you to prevent direct links to your content. The tool is an element of our advanced Hepsia CP, so it provides the same exact intuitive point & click interface. When you log in to your account’s back office and navigate to the Hotlink Protection section, you'll only have to select the domain or subdomain that you want to secure from a drop-down list. If you want to enable this feature only for a particular website folder, you've got the option to do that. All Internet sites with active hotlink protection shall appear in this section and you can disable the service by selecting the checkbox alongside the given site and clicking on the Delete button.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting

If you open a semi-dedicated server account and you discover that another person is linking to your files without your approval, you will be able to easily cut them off by activating the hotlink protection function which we provide. While the regular way to do that is to set up an .htaccess file, we've got a special tool which is able to execute this automatically and you'll only have to select the website in question and to determine whether our system should set up the needed file within the main folder or in a subfolder. The tool is a component of our customized Hepsia Control Panel and provides the exact same user-friendly interface, so you will be able to use it with no problems even if you have never used any web hosting service before. You can disable the hotlink security function for any website/folder with a click through the same section.