Hotlinking is an expression that identifies the inclusion of images on a given website using direct links. If you have site A, for instance, and an individual creates website B and wishes to include a few images from your site, they can either save the images and then include them on their website or they could simply put links on their website to the images on yours. As a result, when a visitor opens website B, site B will steal traffic from your own site A, since the images will load straight from your web hosting account. This process is oftentimes used for documents and other types of files as well. If you want to prevent third parties from stealing your content and from using your own website hosting account’s resources, you can limit their capability to use direct links to your files on their sites.

Hotlinking Protection in Shared Hosting

You can easily shield your content if you create an .htaccess file within the website’s root folder, but just in case you don't have previous experience, you need to use our hotlink protection tool. The latter is included with all shared hosting package deals which we offer and could be accessed using the in-house built Hepsia CP. The protection could be turned on in 2 basic steps - choose the domain or subdomain for the site in question, then select if our system should set up the .htaccess file in the primary folder or in a subfolder and you will be ready. You do not need any programming capabilities or any experience with this kind of matters, as there will be nothing else to do. If you would like to remove the protection at some time, you could see all the websites which are protected inside the same section of the CP with a Delete button beside each one of them.