How To Secure Your Webhosting Bandwidth

Salam and hello everyone. So, for this time, I want to share with you all one method that you can use to secure your hosting bandwidth from being “stolen” by some irresponsible people. Since some people have requested this tutorial hence, for this time, I’ll guide you guys on how to set this simple setting on your hosting CPanel so you’ll be able to control which websites can directly link any files from your hosting and of course this is one of the ways to set which websites you want to share your hosting bandwidth. Sound complicated? Actually, it is not that complicated, it is just a simple setting that will be done in few steps.

So, are you ready? Here we go. First thing first, login into your CPanel account. Usually the URL to access your cpanel is http://yourdomain/cpanel.

Ok, here is the first step. Scroll down until you find this icon named Hotlink Protection under Security tab. Click that icon.

The below screenshot will appear and you can see all those URLs and some setting there.
If you ever yet do any setting on this before, the default setting for this is “the hotlink protection is currently disabled”. If it is so, enable it by simply click enable button and the hotlink protection now enabled.

Ok, now is the important step, you need to list down all websites URL that you will allow to access the files hosted on your hosting. For example, if you have second website with the URL yourdomain.org and you want to allow this domain to use all files hosted in your current hosting. Hence, you’ll need to enter the web url which is with and without www. So, for this case, what you’ll need to enter are http://www.yourdomain.org and http://yourdomain.org in URLs to allow access box. This is a must otherwise your current hosting will block this domain from accessing your files in your current hosting. Get it?

Next step is, if you notice, below the URLs to allow access box, there’s another setting you can set up which is which types of file you want to protect. As default, it’ll list jpeg, gif, png, jpg and bmp. And in my case I’ve added another file extension, which is .swf. So, if you’ve another types of file, for example compressed zip file with extension .zip. What you need to key in is ,zip. (Note: comma should be included to separate this file type with other file types) See the screenshot for details.

And for the check box, just check it as allow direct access.

Another important step is the last part which is the url for the image or file to replace the original image/file that has been linked from your hosting without your consent. You can host this replacement image/file at any free hosting image/file hosting such as Photobucket or Flickr. Simply put the link for the picture that you’ve hosted at Photobucket or Flickr into the “Redirect request to this URL” text field.

Now, you’re done! Simply press ok and now you can try either your hosting protection is working or not by selecting any images/files from your hosting with the extension as what you’ve entered before, for example an image file with .jpeg extension. Now try to display or insert the image that you’ve hosted in your hosting to any blogs or websites that currently not in your allowed URLs list. Publish it and see what will happen. What you will see is not the image that you’ve hosted on your hosting, but the image that you’ve hosted on the free image hosting. If it is what you see, it means your protection now is working. If it is not, try to recheck your allowed URLs list, maybe you insert the image in your allowed URLs.

For others to test it from my hosting, you can try to insert the image below from this URL ( http://izzatruslan.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/hotlink-test.jpg ) which is hosted on this blog’s hosting.

Then, insert the image to any of your blogs, publish it and see what you’ll get. The image you should get is as below. If you see the image below, that’s means my hosting protection is working.

I hope this simple tutorial can help you to prevent others from illegally linking any files from your hosting and steal your hosting bandwidth. This tutorial might benefits those who paid for hosting with low monthly bandwidth and for me, you should control your hosting bandwidth usage otherwise your websites/blogs will be inaccessible when your hosting is running out of bandwidth. And for those who paid for hosting with high monthly bandwidth, you also might consider to apply this bandwidth protection. The reason is simple, you paid for it. If you don’t mind people take it from you, then it’s okay.

Remember one thing, without bandwidth, your websites/blogs are inaccessible. Until next time, hope this simple tutorial will help you to secure your hosting bandwidth.

p/s: Do leave your comment if you’ve any questions across your mind. Thanks.