Hotlinking, which is oftentimes labeled bandwidth theft also, identifies linking to images that are on another Internet site. In simple terms, if you have a website with some images on it, somebody else may also develop a website and rather than using their own images, they may put links directly to your images. Although this might not be such a major issue if you have a smaller personal site, it can be something quite serious if the images are copyrighted, due to the fact that someone might be trying to copy your website and trick people. If your web hosting package deal has a restricted monthly bandwidth quota, you may use up all your resources without getting legitimate site visitors, simply because the traffic will be consumed by the other Internet site. This is why you should consider shielding your content from being hotlinked - not simply images, but also files, as in rare occasions other sorts of files are linked too.

Hotlinking Protection in Shared Hosting

You can easily protect your content if you set up an .htaccess file inside the website’s root folder, but in case you do not have previous experience, you need to use our hotlink protection tool. The latter comes with all shared hosting package deals that we offer and can be accessed using the in-house built Hepsia CP. The protection may be turned on in two basic steps - choose the domain or subdomain for the website in question, then select if our system should set up the .htaccess file inside the primary folder or within a subfolder and you shall be all set. You don't need any computer programming skills or any experience with such matters, due to the fact that there will be nothing else to do. If you wish to disable the protection eventually, you can see all the websites which are protected inside the exact same section of the CP with a Delete button next to each one of them.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting

If you start a semi-dedicated server account and you learn that someone is linking to your files without your authorization, you will be able to easily cut them off by switching on the hotlink security feature we provide. While the standard method of doing this is to set up an .htaccess file, we have got a special tool that is able to execute this automatically and you shall simply have to pick the site in question and to determine whether our system should generate the necessary file in the main folder or inside a subfolder. The tool is an element of our custom Hepsia CP and features the exact same user-friendly interface, so you will be able to use it with no difficulties even in case you have never used any web hosting service before. You could switch off the hotlink security feature for any website/folder with a click through the same section.