Hotlinking, which is sometimes referred to as bandwidth theft as well, describes linking to images which are on another Internet site. Basically, if you have a site with some images on it, somebody else could also build a website and rather than using their own images, they can put links directly to your images. Even though this might not be such a serious issue if you have a small personal Internet site, it can be something quite serious if the images are copyrighted, as someone may be attempting to copy your Internet site and cheat people. If your website hosting package deal has a limited monthly bandwidth quota, you may exhaust your resources without getting real visitors, due to the fact that the traffic shall be consumed by the other website. This is why you should think about preserving your content from being hotlinked - not only images, but also documents, as in rare occasions other sorts of files are linked as well.
Hotlinking Protection in Cloud Web Hosting
Since our cloud web hosting include a simple and practical hotlink protection tool, you shall be able to secure your content from displaying on third-party websites with literally just two clicks, even if you don't have very much experience with this type of matters. The tool comes with the Hepsia hosting CP and when you open it, you will only have to pick the domain or subdomain that you'd like to protect. In addition, you could also choose if the hotlink protection shall be active for the default domain root folder or exclusively for a subfolder. You will not need to do anything else, because our system will create an .htaccess file automatically inside the needed location and shall add the necessary code in it. All Internet websites with active hotlink protection shall be listed within the exact same section, so you may disable this service for any of them with just a click.
Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers
If you do not want others to use your images on their Internet sites without your consent, you may easily enable the hotlink security function, which is provided with all semi-dedicated server plans. As opposed to setting up an .htaccess file by hand inside the Internet site folder and writing some code inside it, which is the conventional approach to deny direct linking to files, you may use an incredibly simple tool, that we have included in the Hepsia CP. From it, you will only need to select the site that has to be protected and our system will do the rest. Optionally, you can choose if the .htaccess file needs to be set up straight within the root folder or within a subfolder, in case you would like to switch on the hotlink security function only for some content and not for the whole site. Stopping it is just as simple - you'll only need to mark the checkbox beside the respective Internet site and to click on the Delete button.