Are you concerned about other web sites calling images on their web pages to image files that are actually located on your site, and how it affects your bandwidth?
Hotlink protection is a feature located in your control panel to block any site making an image call that doesn't come from your site itself, or from a list of sites you allow access to.
While using the Hotlink protection feature in the control panel, you can create a list of allowed domains, IPs or specific
URL addresses that are allowed to load images from your site.
Hotlink protection can be enabled or disabled and should automatically determine what domains/addresses are allowed to load images. By default, it will allow any domain hosted on your account. Also, please note that anytime you add a new sub domain or pointed domain to your account, these rules will affect it, so you must add it to the list of allowed hosts or images may not load off their web site.
Hotlink protection works by checking the 'Activate' field (this is intentionally spelled referer with one 'A')
While this isn't perfect technology, it can help to deter some people from calling your files on their site and use your bandwidth.
View Flash Tutorials For Enabling Hotlink Protection >>
Enabling hotlink protection is meant to stop other web sites from making calls to your local image files. This is done by clicking the 'activate' field to see what URL the person accessing the image file came from.
If it doesn't match a site listed in the hotlink protection area of the control panel, it will refuse to load the images for them. Some problems exist if the checks aren't accurate or if the domain isn't on the list.
If you add a new sub domain or domain pointer, or park a domain, you will need to make sure that the new domain or sub domain is on the list of allowed sites/URL's to load images.
The hotlink protection rules are located in a file called '.htaccess' in your master public_html web root directory. Any sub domains, domain pointers or parked domains are all subject to the rules set in this file, since the sub root's you may have for a pointed domain or sub domain also use the same web root path.
That means if you have a master domain of larry.com, then larry.com's web root is /home/larry/public_html. That is where the .htaccess file exists. If you add a pointed domain of bob.com, then bob.com's web root will be /home/larry/public_html/bob. Since bob's web root is in the public_html path, it must follow the rules that are in the .htaccess file in that path.
This is why you must add any new domains to the hotlink protection, if you add them to your site. Otherwise the rules will not be valid and images may not load.
Another problem can exist where some browsers like Internet Explorer do not properly resolve URL's. So, while two browsers are accessing the http://www.larry.com URL, one will resolve it to http://www.larry.com/ and another will resolve it to http://www.larry.com (notice that one has the trailing forward slash / on the URL).
When hotlink protection is enabled, it will set the rule to check the URL as http://www.domain.com/*any URL* (*any URL is only an example showing that as long as it has http://www.domain.com/ at the start of the path, anything else is acceptable and allowed*). So, if it doesn't resolve with the trailing forward slash, larry.com will not be the same as larry.com/ and the image may refuse to load.
To remedy that problem, you can edit the .htaccess file on your main web root (public_html) and simply remove the trailing slash from the rule. Be careful making any changes to the .htaccess file, as some sites use Frontpage server extensions and any changes may affect that. Additionally, an error in the syntax or a typo could make any web site accesses to your domain result in an error, or not allow you to load images until it's fixed.
A 403 is a forbidden error. This is the error that occurs when the web server cannot access the file you request due to a UNIX permission issue.
Note: This is also the error you get if your account is suspended. If your entire website produces a 403 error, you should contact Sen9 Technical Support ASAP to find out why your site may have been suspended (in most cases, we will inform you if and when we suspend your account).
The HTTP 404 error means that the requested file could not be found. This happens when you put in a URL and the file simply does not exist.
The www. prefix on domain names is already added to every newly added domain in the DNS system and web server configurations when an account is set up, so the settings exist and should work without any need to change anything on your end, nor our end.
If you are having trouble accessing the domain with the www. prefix, and can access it without (or vice versa), it would be due to the fact that you had the www.domain.com (or domain.com) address cache the old routing address from previous access attempts (prior to the domain propagation completing).
To remedy this problem, you should restart any domain services or domain resolution/resolver settings/service, if you know how on your system. For most users, it's easiest to simply reboot their system to clear the routing cache.
Some ISP's only clear their cache every 72 hours, so even though your friend across the street on another ISP can see your new site, you may not be able to if your ISP has not cleared their cache.
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