Hot Link Protection

[Aaron_S]

I was trying to find information on this. Can anyone tell me where to find it, I know I ran across it somewhere, but performing a search from the help page hasn't done it. Thanks.

[TCH-Thomas]

Have you tried documentation in cpanel?

Hotlinking is when another web site owner links directly to one or more of your images or multimedia files and includes it on their web page. Not only is this theft of your intellectual property, you are paying for the bandwidth used by that site. Refer to this article for more information on hotlinking.

 

CPanel can prevent hotlinking by only allowing named sites (such as your own web site) to access files on your site.

 

To prevent hotlinking:

 

Click on the HotLink Protection button on the home page.

 

Enter any other addresses that you will allow to access your site other than the provided defaults in the central area.

 

Enter the protected extensions in the Extensions to allow field. Make sure you separate each extension with a comma.

 

Enter the address to redirect any hotlinking to in the Url to Redirect to field.

 

Click on the Allow direct requests tick box if you want to allow direct URL access to non-HTML files, such as images.

 

Click on the Activate button.

 

Search seems to be down. I tried several things i DO know exists but nope.

Edited February 24, 2004 by Jikrantz

[MikeJ]

From the cPanel Documentation under Hotlink Prevention:

 

Hotlinking is when another web site owner links directly to one or more of your images or multimedia files and includes it on their web page. Not only is this theft of your intellectual property, you are paying for the bandwidth used by that site. Refer to this article for more information on hotlinking.

 

CPanel can prevent hotlinking by only allowing named sites (such as your own web site) to access files on your site.

 

To prevent hotlinking:

1. Click on the HotLink Protection button on the home page.
   
2. Enter any other addresses that you will allow to access your site other than the provided defaults in the central area.
   
3. Enter the protected extensions in the Extensions to allow field. Make sure you separate each extension with a comma.
   
4. Enter the address to redirect any hotlinking to in the Url to Redirect to field.
   
5. Click on the Allow direct requests tick box if you want to allow direct URL access to non-HTML files, such as images.
   
6. Click on the Activate button.
   

[GroovyFish]

Jinx...someone owes someone else a coke LOL

[Aaron_S]

Thanks everyone. I'm glad I asked. I have another question, is there a way to stop people from going directly to various directories on your web site?

In other words, I have a home page under www or public_html and subdirectories underneath that contain images that are served through an album, but I don't want those pictures accessed directly. I just want those images served to an html page but not looked at directly. Did that make any sense? Thanks for any help...

[MikeJ]

There's an option in that hotlink prevention to disallow direct access to the images. If enabled, the image should only display if it's referenced from a page on your site.

[TCH-Dick]

in cpanel, turn off indexing for whatever folder you dont want the directory structure seen in. Or, you can ut a blank index.html page in each folder, then if someone access that folder directly all they will see is a blank page.

[Aaron_S]

Thanks again. I never thought of the blank .html page. As for the indexing, they could still right click, go to view source and find the subdirectories and then go there directly, couldn't they? But I think it still sounds like it would add another hurdle. Thanks.

[Aaron_S]

In the post above with the directions for hot link protection, I have two questions...

 

Here, ..."Enter the protected extensions in the Extensions to allow field. Make sure you separate each extension with a comma." So if I enter .jpg, does that mean these files won't be hot link protected?

 

And here..."Click on the Allow direct requests tick box if you want to allow direct URL access to non-HTML files, such as images." If I click this box, does that mean that all other files besides .html, people will be able to pull up in their browser directly?

 

I guess I don't understand the two directions, which seem similar.

[MikeJ]

The extensions you enter will be protected with hotlink protection.

 

And those extensions will not be allowed to be pulled up directly if the checkbox for allow direct access is not checked.

 

Here's the example from the manual:

[Aaron_S]

Oaky, I got it. Thanks again for all the help...

[escaped_light]

Actually, that brings up another question for me. The redirect part of those settings; If I were to put in a really small picture of "This image from robflavored.com," and point that redirect to it, would that display the warning pic instead of the actual pic if someone were to post in let's say a forum?

 

Thanks again,

 

Robert

[MikeJ]

You can put an image that the redirects go to, but that image cannot be in a protected directory or it won't display, at least according to the manual. (I didn't try it).