Hotlinking Protection
What's hotlink protection and how does it function? When do you need it?
Hotlinking is a term which refers to the addition of images on a given Internet site using direct links. When you have site A, for example, and a person creates website B and wishes to add a few images from your site, they're able to either save the images and then include them on their website or they may simply put links on their website to the images on yours. Consequently, when a visitor opens Internet site B, site B will steal traffic from your own Internet site A, because the images will load from your hosting account. This method is oftentimes used for documents and other types of files too. If you would like to prevent 3rd parties from stealing your content and from using your own website hosting account’s resources, you are able to limit their ability to use direct links to your files on their websites.
-
Hotlinking Protection in Cloud Hosting
There is a way of preventing the hotlinking of your images by using an .htaccess file within the website’s root directory, but if you aren't very tech-savvy, we furthermore give you a very helpful tool that shall permit you to activate the protection with several mouse clicks and without writing any code. The tool could be accessed via the Hepsia Control Panel, offered with all our
cloud hosting and the only 2 things which you'll have to choose are a domain/subdomain from a drop-down menu and if the protection needs to be enabled for the main site folder or for some subfolder. Our system will do the rest, so you shall not need to do anything else by hand on your end. If you want to deactivate the hotlink protection option sometime, you'll just need to go back to exactly the same section, to mark the checkbox next to it and to click on the Delete button.
-
Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers
If you do not want other people to use your images on their sites without your consent, you may easily activate the hotlink protection feature, which is supplied with all
semi-dedicated server package deals. As opposed to setting up an .htaccess file by hand in the site folder and writing some code in it, which is the conventional approach to deny direct linking to files, you may use an exceptionally simple tool, which we have integrated into the Hepsia Control Panel. With it, you'll simply have to choose the website that needs to be protected and our system will do the rest. Furthermore, you can decide whether the .htaccess file will be generated straight within the root folder or within a subfolder, if you would like to enable the hotlink protection function just for some content and not for the whole website. Deactivating it is just as effortless - you will only need to mark the checkbox beside the respective Internet site and to click on the Delete button.