Hotlinking, which is sometimes termed bandwidth theft too, describes linking to images which are on another website. Essentially, if you have a website with some images on it, someone else can also create a website and rather than using their own images, they may put links directly to your images. Even though this might not be such a major issue if you have a small personal website, it can be something rather serious if the images are copyrighted, due to the fact that somebody may be trying to copy your site and trick people. If your web hosting package has a restricted monthly bandwidth quota, you can run out of resources without getting legitimate site visitors, because the traffic shall be consumed by the other Internet site. This is the reason why you need to consider preserving your content from being hotlinked - not simply images, but also files, since in rare occasions other types of files are linked as well.

Hotlinking Protection in Cloud Web Hosting

You can easily protect your content if you create an .htaccess file inside the website’s root folder, but in case that you don't have previous experience, you can use our hotlink protection tool. The latter comes with all cloud web hosting package deals which we offer and could be accessed via the in-house built Hepsia CP. The protection can be turned on in two basic steps - select the domain or subdomain for the website in question, then pick if our system should create the .htaccess file in the main folder or in a subfolder and you'll be all set. You don't need any computer programming expertise or any experience with this type of matters, due to the fact that there will be nothing else to do. If you want to remove the protection at some point, you can see all of the Internet sites that are protected within the same section of the Control Panel with a Delete button alongside each one of them.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers

We offer an uncomplicated solution to secure your whole content and even if you are not very tech-savvy, you are able to take full advantage of it with a few mouse clicks. The usual technique to turn on server-side hotlink security is to generate an .htaccess file and to include a few directives in it. With the tool which you'll find inside the Hepsia CP, offered with all semi-dedicated server accounts, you will simply have to select the Internet site which you need to secure and our system will create the .htaccess file for you, including all of the required content in it. You can also use this function for only one folder as opposed to the entire website - you just have to specify where the .htaccess file has to be set up. If you no longer require the hotlink protection to be active, you can disable it with just one click from the very same section of your CP.