How to Set Up Hotlink Protection in cPanel

Posted on by Ronald Caldwell | Updated:
Reading Time: 4 minutes

Hotlink protection in cPanel prevents a third party from embedding your content on their site and using your bandwidth to serve it. It mostly prevents other websites from directly linking to certain files, typically images, on your website. You want to prevent this if you have copyrighted images, or to simply save on bandwidth usage.

This security feature saves money and headaches for your business. This guide provides instructions on how to set up hotlink protection in cPanel.

Requirements

  • A server running cPanel.
  • Login credentials for cPanel.

2. Under Security, click Hotlink Protection.

3. The first section gives you information about hotlink protection and the ability to enable it. The second section, Configure Hotlink Protection, allows you to configure the sites that will have access and the type of files to which you wish to block access. For this tutorial, we will walk you through configuring hotlink protection first.

4. First, make sure your own sites are listed under the URLs to allow access section, so you are able to hotlink to your images.

5. Enter all the file types you want to protect. Check the Allow direct requests box if you want to give the ability to manually enter URLs of a protected file.

6. Enter the URL you want to redirect to, for anyone who tries to hotlink to your files or images. If the configuration is correct, click Submit.

7. You have successfully enabled hotlink protection and see a confirmation message along with your configuration selections.

8. Navigating back to the hotlink protection page, you see the service is enabled. To disable hotlink protection, click the Disable button.

Wrapping Up

Securing your data from hotlinking is important. You want to ensure that your data is protected and your bandwidth is not used without your permission. Learning how to set up hotlink protection in cPanel will help you.

Existing Liquid Web customers with cPanel have 24/7/365 support for these operations. Get the managed experience on our VPS Hosting, Cloud Dedicated Servers, and Dedicated Servers with cPanel by contacting our sales team and getting started.

Avatar for Ronald Caldwell

About the Author: Ronald Caldwell

Ron is a Technical Writer at Liquid Web working with the Marketing team. He has 9+ years of experience in Technology. He obtained an Associate of Science in Computer Science from Prairie State College in 2015. He is happily married to his high school sweetheart and lives in Michigan with her and their children.

Latest Articles

Blocking IP or whitelisting IP addresses with UFW

Read Article

CentOS Linux 7 end of life migrations

Read Article

Use ChatGPT to diagnose and resolve server issues

Read Article

What is SDDC VMware?

Read Article

Best authentication practices for email senders

Read Article