Use Hotlink Protection on your Joomla Site 🛠 MM Live Stream #113

Written by: Tim Davis Created: 28 October 2019

Category: Maintenance Monday

New!Hits: 240Reading time: 02:09

Maintenance Monday

Streamed live on Oct 29, 2019 Maintenance Monday Live Streams

Hotlink Protection is a great way to keep other sites from displaying or using your files. This will cut down on the bandwidth use of your webhosting account and prevent others from using your files to make money instead of you. (Watch for a followup video on Hotlink Protection and it's effect on OpenGraph Images) A big shout out to John Mølholt for the idea of today's topic.

Check out his Hotometa extension for Joomla ► https://hometoll.com/products/hotometa Be sure to watch for a fun way you can turn the tables and display a specific image of your own on someone else's website who is stealing from you.

How to turn on and use hotlink protection is what today's Maintenance Monday is all about. That's what this Maintenance Monday is all about.

Sure, here's a summarized version of the transcript:

Video discusses "Hotlink Protection" for Joomla websites.
- Presenter: Tim Davis, addressing Joomla fans.
- "Maintenance Monday" episode #113 on the Basic Joomla Tutorials YouTube channel.
- Hotlink protection prevents others from directly using images hosted on your site.
- Hotlinked images consume your bandwidth without benefitting you.
- Protects against resource misuse, unauthorized linking, and bandwidth theft.
- Hotlink protection can be enabled in the hosting control panel, specifically cPanel.
- Access hotlink protection under security settings in cPanel.
- Configure allowed domains that can use your site's images.
- Specify blocked file extensions (e.g., jpg, jpeg, gif) to prevent hotlinking.
- Explanation of "allowed direct request" checkbox for specific use cases.
- Disabling hotlink protection allows images to be displayed on other sites.
- Demonstrates how to identify sites that are hotlinking to your images.
- Explains a method to use hotlinking for advertising advantage.
- Suggests renaming images or creating alternative content for those sites.
- Discusses instances where images were being hotlinked from forums.
- Points out the potential challenges of attracting unwanted attention.
- Offers insights into finding instances of hotlinking through website stats.
- Shows the steps to identify referring sites that are using your images.
- Offers an example of finding instances of image hotlinking.
- Presents a scenario where hotlinking can be turned into an advertising opportunity.
- Acknowledges potential concerns about attracting hacker attention.
- Highlights a case where an image was uploaded to another site's content delivery network.
- Video concludes with thanking viewers and encouraging subscriptions to the channel.