Hotlinking, which is often labeled bandwidth theft too, refers to linking to images which are on another Internet site. Simply, if you have a website with some images on it, somebody else may also create a website and as opposed to using their own images, they can put links directly to your images. While this might not be such a big problem if you have one small personal Internet site, it shall be something really serious if the images are copyrighted, as somebody may be aiming to copy your Internet site and cheat people. If your web hosting package deal has a limited monthly bandwidth quota, you can exhaust your resources without getting legitimate site visitors, because the traffic shall be consumed by the other Internet site. This is why you should think about shielding your content from being hotlinked - not only images, but also documents, as in rare occasions other types of files are linked also.
Hotlinking Protection in Hosting
It won't require more than a couple of mouse clicks to switch on the hotlink protection function we provide even if this is the first web hosting account you use, because all our Linux hosting packages come with a very simple and easy-to-use tool that will allow you to stop direct links to your content. The tool is part of our revolutionary Hepsia CP, so it has the very same intuitive point-and-click interface. After you log in to your account’s back office and visit the Hotlink Protection section, you'll only need to pick the domain or subdomain that you want to secure from a drop-down list. If you'd like to activate this service only for a specific site folder, you will have the option to do that. All sites with active hotlink protection shall appear within this section and you will be able to disable the service by selecting the checkbox next to the given website and pressing the Delete button.
Hotlinking Protection in Semi-dedicated Hosting
If you don't want others to use your images on their sites without your permission, you can easily switch on the hotlink protection function, which is available with all semi-dedicated server plans. Rather than setting up an .htaccess file manually within the site folder and writing some code in it, which is the conventional method to deny direct linking to files, you may use a really simple tool, which we have integrated into the Hepsia CP. Using it, you will only have to select the Internet site which has to be protected and our system will do the rest. Additionally, you can make a decision if the .htaccess file will be generated straight in the root folder or inside a subfolder, if you want to enable the hotlink protection feature just for some content and not for the whole website. Stopping it is just as easy - you'll only need to mark the checkbox alongside the respective Internet site and to click on the Delete button.