HotLink Protection in the cPanel control panel
Learn how to configure HotLink protection in cPanel to prevent bandwidth usage by other sites. Follow the simple steps to secure your media files.
Introduction
- In this article, we will describe how to configure HotLink protection in cPanel.
- By enabling HotLink protection, you can prevent other websites from using your site's bandwidth.
- Hotlinking is when another website links directly to the hosted files on your site. For example, a web page of another site may contain direct links to the media files stored on your site. As a result, your site serves the media files to that external website, and the bandwidth is effectively "used up".
- To prevent this scenario, you can configure HotLink protection in cPanel by following the steps below:
Requirements
- a cPanel account
Steps
1. Access cPanel and go to the Security section, then click on HotLink Protection.
2. Click on Activate
3. In the box "Access permission URLs:" ( URLs to allow access ) enter the URLs of the domains that have permission to use the media files from your site, being able to access them.
4. In the next box, you will add, separated by a comma, the extensions of media files that you do not want other websites to access. These extensions will be protected by HotLink, and some of them are already preset by the system, as shown in the image below.
5. Optionally, if you check "Direct requests are allowed", media files will be accessible via the image's URL in a browser
6. In the last box, you can optionally enter a URL that points to a page specifying the prohibition of access to media files by unauthorized users.
7. Click on Resend (Submit)