Hotlinking is an expression that refers to the addition of images on a particular website via direct links. In case you have website A, for instance, and an individual creates website B and wishes to include a couple of images from your website, they're able to either save the images and then include them on their site or they could simply put links on their site to the images on yours. As a result, every time a visitor opens Internet site B, site B will steal traffic from your own website A, as the images shall load from your website hosting account. This method is usually used for documents and other types of files also. If you wish to prevent third parties from stealing your content and from using your own website hosting account’s resources, you are able to limit their capability to use direct links to your files on their websites.
Hotlinking Protection in Cloud Hosting
There's a simple method for preventing the hotlinking of your images through an .htaccess file inside the website’s root directory, but if you aren't very tech-savvy, we additionally offer a very helpful tool that shall permit you to activate the protection with a few mouse clicks and without inputting any code. The tool can be accessed from the Hepsia Control Panel, provided with all our Linux cloud hosting and the only 2 things which you'll have to pick are a domain/subdomain from a drop-down menu and if the protection needs to be activated for the main website folder or for some subfolder. Our system shall do the rest, so you shall not have to do anything else personally on your end. If you decide to disable the hotlink protection option at one point, you will only have to come back to the same section, to mark the checkbox next to it and to press the Delete button.