Hotlinking Protection
What's hotlink protection and just how does it work? When do you really need it?
Hotlinking is a largely accepted Internet expression for linking to another website’s images. In other words, if you build an Internet site, another person may want to use the images you have and instead of downloading them from your site and then uploading them to their own website, they can simply put links directly to your Internet site. In this way, each time a visitor opens their website, the images shall be loaded from your account, thus stealing from your own monthly traffic quota, not to mention the copyright problems that could develop or that someone can be trying to deceive people into thinking that they are actually on your Internet site. In rare instances, documents and other types of files can also be linked in the same exact way. To stop this from happening and to avoid such situations, you may activate hotlink protection for your website.
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Hotlinking Protection in Shared Hosting
As our
Linux shared hosting include a simple and practical hotlink protection tool, you will be able to secure your content from showing on third-party websites with literally just two clicks, even if you do not have a lot of experience with this type of matters. The tool is included with the Hepsia hosting CP and once you open it, you'll just need to choose the domain or subdomain that you would like to protect. Optionally, you can also choose if the hotlink protection shall be active for the default domain root folder or only for a subfolder. You won't have to do anything else, due to the fact that our system shall create an .htaccess file automatically inside the desired location and shall add the necessary code in it. All sites with enabled hotlink protection shall be listed within the very same section, so you could disable this service for each of them with just a click.
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Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting
If you don't want other people to use your images on their sites without your permission, you may easily switch on the hotlink security feature, which is provided with all
semi-dedicated server plans. As opposed to creating an .htaccess file by hand in the site folder and writing some code within it, which is the conventional method to deny direct linking to files, you could use an exceedingly simple tool, that we've integrated into the Hepsia Control Panel. By using it, you'll simply need to select the Internet site which has to be secured and our system will do the rest. Moreover, you can decide if the .htaccess file should be set up directly in the root folder or in a subfolder, in case you want to activate the hotlink security function just for some content and not for the entire website. Disabling it is just as simple - you will only have to mark the checkbox next to the respective website and to click on the Delete button.
