Hotlink Protection in cPanel: Managing Hotlink in cPanel in 7 Steps

Hotlink protection prevents other websites from directly linking to files (as specified below) on your website. Other sites will still be able to link to any file type that you don’t specify below (i.e. html files). An example of hotlinking would be using a <img> tag to display an image from your site from somewhere else on the net. The end result is that the other site is stealing your bandwidth. List all sites below from which you wish to allow direct links. This system attempts to add all sites it knows you own to the list; however, you may need to add others.

For accessing Hotlink Protection in cPanel

Login to cPanel >> Security >> Hotlink Protection >> Following window will appear :

Drawback of Hotlinks:

A hotlink occurs when someone embeds content from your site in another site and uses your bandwidth to serve the files. You can use this interface to prevent this issue.

In the above window you can see that the “Hotlink Protection” is currently “enabled”

Note:

When you disable these option, make sure that you allow hotlinks for necessary domains like sub-domains or any other URL’s which you want to access. If you these URL’s that you wish to access does not appear in the “Configure Hotlink Protection List” which allows us to add the list of URL’s which we want to access then you may not be able to see the images in various interfaces like HTML Editor or in the “File Manager”

For Enabling follow the steps:

1. Enable Hotlink Protection.
2. Enter the URL’s of the specific sites which you want to allow too hotlink to your site.
3. For blocking direct access for the extensions, which you want to block add them to the “Block direct access for the following extensions (comma-separated)” text box.
4. When you block these file types, others URL’s cannot hotlink those types of files from your website,
5. Allow Direct Request:

This option is used when you want visitor’s access to specific content through an URL , enter them in this text box.

6. Redirect the request to the following URL:

This option is used when you want to redirect requests for certain content, enter the URL to which you want to redirect your visitor in this text box.

7. Click “Submit”.

Disable Hotlink Protection in cPanel

For disabling Click “Disable” option.

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