Hotlinking, which is sometimes labeled bandwidth theft also, refers to linking to images that are on another site. In simple terms, if you have a website with some images on it, another person can also create a site and as opposed to using their own images, they could put links straight to your images. Although this might not be such a big problem if you have a small personal Internet site, it will be something very serious if the images are copyrighted, as somebody could be attempting to copy your site and trick people. If your web hosting package has a restricted monthly bandwidth quota, you may exhaust your resources without getting real visitors, because the traffic will be consumed by the other site. This is the reason why you should think about shielding your content from being hotlinked - not simply images, but also files, as in rare occasions other kinds of files are linked too.
Hotlinking Protection in Shared Website Hosting
Since our Linux shared website hosting provide a simple and practical hotlink protection tool, you will be able to secure your content from showing on third-party websites with literally no more than two clicks, even if you do not have a lot of experience with this type of matters. The tool is included with the Hepsia hosting CP and when you open it, you'll just need to choose the domain or subdomain that you'd like to protect. Additionally, you may also choose if the hotlink protection will be enabled for the default domain root folder or just for a subfolder. You'll not have to do anything else, because our system will create an .htaccess file automatically within the needed location and will add the needed code within it. All websites with active hotlink protection will be listed inside exactly the same section, so you can disable this service for any of them with a mouse click.
Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting
If you start a semi-dedicated server account and you learn that somebody is linking to your files without your consent, you could easily cut them off by switching on the hotlink protection function that we offer you. While the conventional method of doing this is to create an .htaccess file, we have got a special tool that can easily execute this automatically and you'll simply have to choose the site in question and to determine whether our system should generate the required file within the main folder or within a subfolder. The tool is an element of our custom Hepsia Control Panel and has the same user-friendly interface, so you will be able to use it without issues even in case you have never used any hosting service before. You'll be able to turn off the hotlink protection function for any website/folder with a click from the exact same section.