Hotlinking, which is often referred to as bandwidth theft also, refers to linking to images that are on another website. Basically, if you have an Internet site with some images on it, some other person could also build a site and rather than using their own images, they can put links directly to your images. While this may not be such a serious problem if you have a small personal website, it'll be something rather serious if the images are copyrighted, as somebody can be trying to copy your site and deceive people. If your hosting package has a restricted monthly bandwidth quota, you will run out of resources without getting actual site visitors, as the traffic will be consumed by the other site. That is why you need to consider preserving your content from being hotlinked - not just images, but also documents, as in rare occasions other sorts of files are linked as well.

Hotlinking Protection in Web Hosting

You can easily protect your content if you create an .htaccess file inside the website’s root folder, but if you do not have previous experience, you could use our hotlink protection tool. The latter comes with all web hosting package deals we offer and can be accessed using the in-house built Hepsia Control Panel. The protection could be enabled in two simple steps - pick the domain or subdomain for the site in question, then pick if our system should set up the .htaccess file inside the main folder or inside a subfolder and you'll be all set. You do not need any computer programming skills or any experience with this type of matters, as there shall be nothing else to do. If you wish to turn off the protection eventually, you could see all the websites that are protected inside the very same section of the Control Panel with a Delete button beside each one of them.

Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Servers

We provide you with an effective solution to protect your content and even if you are not really tech-savvy, you could take full advantage of it with several mouse clicks. The common technique to activate server-side hotlink security is to set up an .htaccess file and to include a couple of directives within it. With the tool that you'll find in the Hepsia Control Panel, which comes with all semi-dedicated server accounts, you will simply need to select the website that you need to protect and our system shall create the .htaccess file for you, adding all of the needed content in it. You can also use this function for just one folder as opposed to the entire website - you just need to specify where the .htaccess file needs to be created. If you no longer require the hotlink security to be switched on, you can deactivate it with a single click via the very same section of your Control Panel.