Hotlinking, which is often called bandwidth theft as well, identifies linking to images that are on another site. In simple terms, if you have a site with some images on it, someone else could also build a website and as opposed to using their own images, they can put links straight to your images. Although this might not be such a serious problem if you have a smaller personal website, it can be something really serious if the images are copyrighted, due to the fact that someone may be trying to copy your Internet site and trick people. If your web hosting package has a restricted monthly bandwidth quota, you might use up all your resources without getting legitimate website visitors, as the traffic will be consumed by the other website. This is the reason why you need to think about protecting your content from being hotlinked - not simply images, but also files, as in rare occasions other types of files are linked as well.
Hotlinking Protection in Shared Hosting
It won't take more than several clicks to activate the hotlink protection feature which we offer you even if this is the 1st web hosting account which you use, due to the fact that all of our Linux shared hosting feature a simple and easy to work with tool that will permit you to stop direct links to your content. The tool is an element of our revolutionary Hepsia CP, so it features the very same easy-to-use point-and-click interface. As soon as you log in to your account’s back office and visit the Hotlink Protection section, you will simply need to choose the domain or subdomain that you would like to secure from a drop-down list. If you wish to enable this service only for a particular Internet site folder, you will have the option to do that. All websites with enabled hotlink protection shall appear inside this section and you could disable the service by selecting the checkbox next to the given Internet site and clicking on the Delete button.
Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers
We provide you with an uncomplicated solution to shield your content and even if you aren't very tech-savvy, you'll be able to take full advantage of it with several mouse clicks. The standard approach to enable server-side hotlink security is to set up an .htaccess file and to include a few directives within it. With the tool which you'll find inside the Hepsia CP, provided with all of the semi-dedicated server accounts, you will only have to select the website which you would like to protect and our system shall create the .htaccess file for you, adding all of the required content within it. You can also use this option for only one folder instead of the whole Internet site - you just need to specify where the .htaccess file has to be set up. If you no longer need the hotlink protection to be switched on, you can disable it with a single click through the very same section of your Control Panel.