Performance-oriented way to protect files on PHP level?

Question

I am looking for some input on something I have been thinking about for a long time. It is a very general problem, maybe there are solutions out there I haven\'t thought of

Answer 1

I'd just prevent hotlinking of any non-HTML file, so all the "assets" stuff is accessible only from the HTML page. Removing (or protecting) the page just removes everything without having to mess up the whole file system.