How To Set Up Hotlink Protection On cPanel

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.

Notes: When you disable hot links, make certain that you allow hot links for any necessary domains. For example, your website’s subdomains and the URL that you use to access your cPanel account. If the URL that you use to access your cPanel account does not appear in the List the URLs to which you wish to allow access list, you may not see embedded images in the HTML Editor in the File Manager interface (cPanel >> Home >> Files >> File Manager).

Enable hotlink protection

To enable hotlink protection, perform the following steps:

Click Enable.

To allow specific sites to hotlink to your site, add their URLs to the List the URLs to which you wish to allow access list.

To block direct access to files of specific types, add those file extensions to the Block direct access for the following extensions list.

• For example, to block all .jpg images, add .jpg to the Block direct access for the following extensions list.
• When you block these file types, others cannot hotlink those types of files from your website, regardless of any other settings.

To allow visitors access to specific content through the URL, select the Allow direct requests option.

• For example, if you enable this option, a visitor could enter http://www.example.com/folder/example.jpg as a URL to access the example.jpg file.

To redirect requests for certain content, enter the URL to which you want to redirect your visitor in the Redirect the request to the following URL text box.

Click Submit.