Hotlinking, which is sometimes labeled bandwidth theft also, refers to linking to images that are on another Internet site. Simply, if you have a website with some images on it, another individual may also create a website and as opposed to using their own images, they could put links straight to your images. While this may not be such a big problem if you have one small personal site, it shall be something very serious if the images are copyrighted, due to the fact that somebody may be trying to copy your Internet site and deceive people. If your web hosting package has a restricted monthly bandwidth quota, you might use up all your resources without getting real visitors, simply because the traffic will be consumed by the other website. This is why you need to consider protecting your content from being hotlinked - not just images, but also documents, as in rare occasions other types of files are linked also.

Hotlinking Protection in Cloud Web Hosting

There's a method for preventing the hotlinking of your images by using an .htaccess file inside the website’s root directory, but if you are not very tech-savvy, we furthermore provide a very easy-to-work-with tool that shall permit you to activate the protection with a couple of clicks and without entering any code. The tool can be accessed through the Hepsia CP, which comes with all our cloud web hosting and the only two things that you'll need to pick are a domain/subdomain from a drop-down menu and whether the protection should be activated for the main website folder or for some subfolder. Our system will do the rest, so you will not have to do anything else personally on your end. If you wish to deactivate the hotlink protection option sometime, you will just need 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 offer an uncomplicated solution to protect your whole content and even if you aren't really tech-savvy, you'll be able to take full advantage of it with a few mouse clicks. The usual way to enable server-side hotlink protection is to generate an .htaccess file and to add a number of directives within it. With the tool which you'll find inside the Hepsia CP, supplied with all semi-dedicated server accounts, you'll only need to select the site that you intend to protect and our system will create the .htaccess file for you, including all the required content within it. You may also use this function for only one folder instead of the whole website - you just have to specify where the .htaccess file should be set up. If you no longer want the hotlink security to be enabled, you could deactivate it with just one click from the exact same section of your CP.