Hotlinking, which is oftentimes referred to as bandwidth theft too, describes linking to images which are on another site. In simple terms, if you have an Internet site with some images on it, somebody else can also build a website and instead of using their own images, they may put links directly to your images. Although this may not be such a major issue if you have a smaller personal website, it will be something very serious if the images are copyrighted, as someone could be trying to copy your website and cheat people. If your website hosting package deal has a restricted monthly bandwidth quota, you may run out of resources without getting real website visitors, as the traffic shall be consumed by the other website. This is the reason why you should consider shielding your content from being hotlinked - not simply images, but also files, since in rare occasions other kinds of files are linked also.

Hotlinking Protection in Shared Web Hosting

Since our Linux shared web hosting come with a simple and practical hotlink protection tool, you will be able to secure your content from appearing on third-party Internet sites with literally just a couple of clicks, even if you don't have very much experience with such matters. The tool comes with the Hepsia hosting Control Panel and as soon as you open it, you will only need to select the domain or subdomain that you want to protect. Optionally, you may also pick if the hotlink protection will be enabled for the default domain root folder or just for a subfolder. You will not need to do anything else, due to the fact that our system shall create an .htaccess file automatically inside the preferred location and will include the required code within it. All sites with active hotlink protection will be listed within the exact same section, so you could disable this service for each of them with a click.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting

If you have a semi-dedicated server account with us and you find out that somebody has hotlinked any of your images, you can use the protection tool that we have created and integrated into our in-house built Hepsia hosting Control Panel. Once you activate this function, a server-generated image will appear on the third-party website as a substitute for your actual images. You will only have to navigate to the Hotlink Protection section in the Control Panel and select the domain or subdomain your website uses from a practical drop-down menu - it's as easy as that. If necessary, you will also have the option to activate the feature only for a particular subfolder and not for the website in its entirety. Deactivating the function is just as simple - return to the very same section, check the box alongside the specific site and then click on the Delete button.