Hotlinking, which is often referred to as bandwidth theft as well, identifies linking to images that are on another site. Essentially, if you have a site with some images on it, somebody else could also create a site and rather than using their own images, they may put links directly to your images. Even though this may not be such a major issue if you have one small personal website, it will be something quite serious if the images are copyrighted, since somebody can be trying to copy your Internet site and deceive people. If your web hosting package has a limited monthly bandwidth quota, you might run out of resources without getting actual website visitors, due to the fact that the traffic shall be consumed by the other site. This is the reason why you need to consider preserving your content from being hotlinked - not only images, but also files, since in rare occasions other sorts of files are linked also.

Hotlinking Protection in Web Hosting

It won't require more than a few mouse clicks to enable the hotlink security function we offer you even if this is the 1st website hosting account you use, due to the fact that all our web hosting plans come with a quite simple and easy-to-use tool that will allow you to prevent direct links to your content. The tool is an element of our revolutionary Hepsia CP, so it offers the very same intuitive point & click interface. After you log in to your account’s back office and go to the Hotlink Protection section, you'll simply need to select the domain or subdomain that you want to secure from a drop-down list. If you wish to switch on this service only for a certain site folder, you've got the option to do that. All websites 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 Servers

If you don't want other individuals to use your images on their websites without your consent, you could easily activate the hotlink security function, which is provided with all semi-dedicated server package deals. Instead of creating an .htaccess file manually in the Internet site folder and writing some code within it, which is the conventional method to deny direct linking to files, you may use an exceedingly simple tool, which we've incorporated into the Hepsia CP. From it, you'll simply have to choose the site that should be secured and our system will do the rest. Also, you can decide if the .htaccess file will be set up straight inside the root folder or within a subfolder, if you'd like to switch on the hotlink security function just for some content and not for the entire website. Stopping it is just as simple - you'll simply have to mark the checkbox beside the respective site and to click on the Delete button.