How Can I Prevent Hotlinking?

Don't you find it aggravating when you discover that not only has someone stolen your images for her own site, but has also not even bothered to save the images, but is hotlinking directly to your site?

You can change the image to something less flattering (we have full instructions to do this in our What Is Hotlinking & What Can I Do About It article.

You can also make a permanent solution to prevent anyone from doing this, without having to go through the trouble of renaming images. It is done through your .htaccess file. You may need to check with your host, as not all hosting companies allow their clients to change the .htaccess file, however, some will change it if you request it.

How to change your .htaccess file

1. Save a backup of your .htaccess. Save it as .htaccess2 for example. If you run into problems, you can upload your backup copy to the server.
2. Open the file and enter:
   

   RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?example\.com/ [NC RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$ RewriteRule \.(jpe?g|gif|bmp|png)$ images/nohotlink.jpg [L]

3. Change example to your own domain name in the second line above.
4. Create an image called nohotlink.jpg. This is the image that will display when someone tries to hotlink to any of your images.
5. Upload your new .htaccess file and your image.

Don't ban hotlinkers if you allow people to place a button or banner to your website on their own site. They will no longer work.

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