Hotlinking, which is often called bandwidth theft as well, describes linking to images which are on another site. Basically, if you have an Internet site with some images on it, somebody else may also develop a site and instead of using their own images, they could put links straight to your images. While this may not be such a major issue if you have a smaller personal Internet site, it shall be something very serious if the images are copyrighted, as somebody might be trying to copy your site and deceive people. If your web hosting package has a limited monthly bandwidth quota, you might run out of resources without getting actual site visitors, as the traffic will be consumed by the other Internet site. That is why you should consider preserving your content from being hotlinked - not just images, but also files, because in rare occasions other kinds of files are linked as well.

Hotlinking Protection in Shared Web Hosting

You can easily shield your content if you set up an .htaccess file within the website’s root folder, but if you don't have previous experience, you could use our hotlink protection tool. The latter is included with all shared web hosting packages that we offer and could be accessed from the in-house built Hepsia Control Panel. The protection can be turned on in 2 basic steps - pick the domain or subdomain for the Internet site in question, then pick if our system should create the .htaccess file inside the primary folder or inside a subfolder and you shall be good to go. You don't need any programming capabilities or any experience with such matters, since there will be nothing else to do. If you'd like to disable the protection at some time, you can see all the sites that are protected inside the same exact section of the CP with a Delete button alongside each of them.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting

Our company offers an uncomplicated solution to shield your entire content and even if you aren't very tech-savvy, you'll be able to benefit from it with just a few clicks. The common technique to turn on server-side hotlink security is to set up an .htaccess file and to include a few directives in it. With the tool which you will find inside the Hepsia CP, included with all of the semi-dedicated server accounts, you'll only need to pick the Internet site that you want to secure and our system shall create the .htaccess file for you, adding all the necessary content inside it. You may also use this option for just one folder rather than the entire site - you just have to specify where the .htaccess file needs to be created. If you no longer need the hotlink protection to be switched on, you'll be able to disable it with a single click from the exact same section of your Control Panel.