Hotlinking is an expression which refers to the inclusion of images on a particular website through direct links. When you have site A, for instance, and someone creates website B and wants to include a number of images from your site, they can either save the images and then include them on their website or they may simply put links on their site to the images on yours. Subsequently, whenever a visitor opens website B, site B will steal traffic from your own website A, as the images will load directly from your web hosting account. This method is usually used for documents and other kinds of files also. If you would like to prevent third parties from stealing your content and from using your own hosting account’s resources, you'll be able to restrict their ability to use direct links to your files on their websites.
Hotlinking Protection in Cloud Hosting
It shall not take more than a couple of mouse clicks to switch on the hotlink protection function which we provide even if this is the 1st hosting account which you use, as all of our Linux cloud hosting packages include a rather simple and easy-to-use tool that will enable you to stop direct links to your content. The tool is an element of our innovative Hepsia CP, so it has the very same intuitive point-and-click interface. Once you log in to your account’s back office and navigate to the Hotlink Protection section, you will simply need to choose the domain or subdomain that you'd like to protect from a drop-down list. If you'd like to activate this service only for a certain website folder, you will have the option to do that. All Internet sites with enabled hotlink protection shall appear within this section and you can turn off the service by selecting the checkbox alongside the given Internet site and pressing the Delete button.
Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting
If you have a semi-dedicated server account with us and you notice that somebody has hotlinked any of your images, you may use the protection tool which we have developed and integrated into our in-house built Hepsia hosting CP. Once you enable this feature, a server-generated image shall appear on the third-party site rather than your actual images. You'll only have to check out the Hotlink Protection section inside the CP and pick the domain or subdomain which your website uses from a convenient drop-down menu - it's as simple as that. If required, you'll also have the option to switch on the function only for a particular subfolder and not for the website in its entirety. Deactivating the protection is just as effortless - go back to exactly the same section, check the box alongside the given site and then click on the Delete button.