Hotlinking, which is occasionally referred to as bandwidth theft as well, refers to linking to images that are on another website. In simple terms, if you have a website with some images on it, another individual can also develop a website and rather than using their own images, they may put links directly to your images. Even though this might not be such a major issue if you have a small personal website, it can be something very serious if the images are copyrighted, since somebody could be aiming to copy your site and cheat people. If your website hosting package has a limited monthly bandwidth quota, chances are you'll exhaust your resources without getting legitimate site visitors, because the traffic shall be consumed by the other site. That is why you need to consider shielding your content from being hotlinked - not simply images, but also documents, as in rare occasions other kinds of files are linked also.

Hotlinking Protection in Web Hosting

There is a method for preventing the hotlinking of your images by using an .htaccess file in the website’s root directory, but if you aren't very tech-savvy, we additionally give you a very easy-to-work-with tool that shall permit you to activate the protection with several clicks and without entering any code. The tool could be accessed via the Hepsia CP, offered with all our Linux web hosting packages and the only 2 things that you will need to select are a domain/subdomain from a drop-down menu and if the protection should be activated for the main website folder or for some subfolder. Our system will do the rest, so you will not need to do anything else by hand on your end. If you choose to disable the hotlink protection option at some point, you'll just need to go back to exactly the same section, to mark the checkbox beside it and to click on the Delete button.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting

If you have a semi-dedicated server account with us and you discover that someone has hotlinked any of your images, you can use the protection tool which we have designed and integrated into our in-house built Hepsia hosting CP. Whenever you enable this option, a server-generated image will appear on the third-party website instead of your real images. You'll only need to navigate to the Hotlink Protection section within the CP and select the domain or subdomain that your website uses from a practical drop-down menu - it's as simple as that. If needed, you shall also have the option to enable the feature only for a particular subfolder and not for the website altogether. Deactivating the protection is as easy - get back to the very same section, check the box next to the specific Internet site and then click on the Delete button.