Hotlinking occurs when another website embeds your images directly onto their pages. This steals your server bandwidth and costs you money. Plesk makes it easy to stop this theft.
Enabling Hotlink Protection
- Go to Websites & Domains and select your domain.
- Click on Hotlink Protection.
- Click Switch On.
- By default, Plesk protects common file extensions like `mp3`, `jpeg`, `jpg`, `png`, `gif`, `swf`. You can add more extensions to this list if needed.
- In the Friendly domains box, you MUST add your own domain name (e.g., `yourdomain.com`). If you have aliases or subdomains that should be allowed to load these images, list them here too.
- Click OK.
What The Thief Sees: Once activated, if an outside website tries to load your image `
`, the server will refuse the connection (Error 403 Forbidden), saving your precious bandwidth!
`, the server will refuse the connection (Error 403 Forbidden), saving your precious bandwidth!
