Hotlinking is an expression which describes the inclusion of images on a particular website by using direct links. If you have website A, for instance, and a person creates website B and wants to include a couple of images from your Internet site, they're able to either save the images and then include them on their Internet site or they may simply place links on their website to the images on yours. Thus, whenever a visitor opens website B, site B will steal traffic from your own website A, because the images shall load directly from your web hosting account. This method is typically used for documents and other types of files also. If you would like to prevent third parties from stealing your content and from using your own web hosting account’s resources, you are able to restrict their ability to use direct links to your files on their websites.

Hotlinking Protection in Cloud Web Hosting

There is a way of avoiding the hotlinking of your images by using an .htaccess file inside the website’s root directory, but if you aren't very tech-savvy, we also give you a very time and effort saving tool that will permit you to activate the protection with several clicks and without entering any code. The tool could be accessed from the Hepsia CP, offered with all our Linux cloud web hosting and the only 2 things which you'll need to select are a domain/subdomain from a drop-down menu and if the protection should be enabled for the main site folder or for some subfolder. Our system shall do the rest, so you shall not need to do anything else by hand on your end. If you decide to turn off the hotlink protection option at some point, you will just need to go back to the same section, to mark the checkbox beside it and to click on the Delete button.