Hotlinking, which is sometimes labeled bandwidth theft also, identifies linking to images which are on another site. Simply, if you have an Internet site with some images on it, another individual could also build a website and rather than using their own images, they may put links straight to your images. Even though this might not be such a big problem if you have a smaller personal Internet site, it shall be something really serious if the images are copyrighted, since somebody could be trying to copy your website and deceive people. If your web hosting package deal has a limited monthly bandwidth quota, you can run out of resources without getting actual visitors, due to the fact that the traffic shall be consumed by the other website. This is the reason why you need to consider protecting your content from being hotlinked - not just images, but also files, because in rare occasions other sorts of files are linked too.

Hotlinking Protection in Cloud Web Hosting

There is a way of avoiding the hotlinking of your images via an .htaccess file in the website’s root directory, but if you aren't very tech-savvy, we furthermore offer a very easy-to-work-with tool that shall permit you to activate the protection with a couple of clicks and without typing any code. The tool can be accessed via the Hepsia CP, offered with all our cloud web hosting and the only two things which you will need to choose are a domain/subdomain from a drop-down menu and if the protection must be enabled for the main website folder or for some subfolder. Our system will do the rest, so you shall not have to do anything else manually on your end. If you wish to deactivate the hotlink protection option at one point, you'll simply have to go back to the same section, to mark the checkbox beside it and to click on the Delete button.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers

We provide you with a simple solution to protect your content and even if you aren't very tech-savvy, you are able to benefit from it with a few clicks. The common way for you to turn on server-side hotlink security is to set up an .htaccess file and to add a couple of directives in it. With the tool which you'll find inside the Hepsia CP, provided with all semi-dedicated server accounts, you'll simply have to select the website which you intend to protect and our system will set up the .htaccess file for you, adding all of the needed content in it. You can even use this feature for only one folder instead of the whole Internet site - you just have to specify where the .htaccess file needs to be created. If you no longer want the hotlink protection to be switched on, you may disable it with one click via the same section of your CP.