.htaccess tips

[Choplin]

Below I show some common uses of .htaccess which I use myself on many sites. Many of you will find no new information here, but hopefully it will help some!


Code:
Options -Indexes This causes the server not to list the contents of directories (when there is no index). This keeps people from typing in http://www.domainexample.net/images/ (or any other directory) and getting a list of the files.


Code:
AddType application/x-httpd-php .php .htmThis code tells your server to process PHP code in files with the .htm extension. Some servers allready do this by default, but many do not. You can also add .html to the end (or any other extension) if you like. This will keep you from having to rename files to php if you add scripts in later, and also I just happen to like it more


Code:
ErrorDocument 400 /errors/400.htm
ErrorDocument 401 /errors/401.htm
ErrorDocument 403 /errors/403.htm
ErrorDocument 404 /errors/404.htm
ErrorDocument 500 /errors/500.htm The control panel of many hosts let you set the custom error pages, but doing it directly is just as easy. I use these 5 common ones. Just create your pretty error pages, and point to them in .htaccess.


Code:
 redirectPermanent /somepage.htm http://www.domainexample.net/index.htmJust a basic redirect example here. For when you get rid of a page and want all links to it to just point to the index.


Code:
redirectMatch 301 ^/old_directory/(.*) http://www.domainexample.net/index.htmHere we get a little fancier. This is for when you remove an entire directory. It will make any link to that directory (including all pages and sub-pages in it) go back to your main index.


Code:
redirectMatch 301 ^/subsite/(.*) http://www.domainexample.net/$1
redirectMatch 301 ^/subsite http://www.domainexample.net/$1Say you have a sub-site on your domain.. in the 'subsite' directory, and you moved it to its own domain. These two redirects will take all possible link combinations and redirect them to the new domain. Even if the link is like this : /subsite/1/2/3/4/index.php it will redirect to www.domainexample.net/1/2/3/4/index.php. The two lines give you better flexibility. It handles all combinations of trailing slashes, directories/files, and www. prefixes.


Code:
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine onThis code gets the server ready for the next few things we will do


Code:
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example.(.*)
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.domainexample.net/$1 [R=301,L] This bit of code is quite usefull. It will take any links that do not have www in them, and add it to the URL. This means no matter how they link to you, your full domain (with the www) will get the backlink.


Code:
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.domainexample.net/.*$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.domainexample.net$ [NC]
RewriteRule .*\.(jpg|jpeg|gif|png|bmp)$ http://www.domainexample.net/index.htm [R,NC]This is basic hot-link protection code. I did have two other lines added to it (to take care of the times when the link does not contain the www) but if you use the last tip, you do not have to worry about it. Just make sure to put them in order (so the www gets added before the hot-link protection). This will only allow hot-linking from your site. If you want to add another site, just add the appropriate lines.

Now if you want to sometimes allow hot-linking, here is a good method. Create a directory called 'share' (or whatever) and stick in a new .htaccess file with only this line:


Code:
RewriteEngine offThis will counter-act the global .htaccess, and allow hot-linking from whatever directory you stick it in (and sub-directories)

[Andy]

Hi Choplin,

that's all good stuff but to make it accessible to newbies you need to explain what .htaccess is, what kind of server can use it and how to add it to their web sites.

Thanks all the same 

[SensoVision]

Welcome to WKey forums Choplin! And thanks for good article! I'm sure that people who aware of .htaccess and doesn't know the exact way it works this post would be very useful.

Hope you don't mind I've moved your thread to HOWTO Library board so it would get higher exposure.

I'm looking forward to see more good posts from you 

[johnhask]

And for those visitors/bots that we wish to block:

<IfModule mod_access.c>
   <FilesMatch ".*">
      Order Allow,Deny
      Allow from all
      Deny from 64.127.103.0
      Deny from 58.65.240.0
   </FilesMatch>
</IfModule>

You can shorten the ip range to include the entire block (64.)

[Andy]

For people that don't know what .htaccess is, it's a service available on Apache servers that run on Linux-based web hosting. It is a text file called .htaccess (no file extension) containing a list of commands. You upload this file in a folder above/containing any of the files and folders you want to effect (usually in the root of your web site).

What it does is control how URLs are delivered on your site. It is not required but very useful for redirecting web browsers invisibly. The downside is that it is very difficult to debug if it doesn't work as you expected because you don't get any error messages, it either works or does nothing.

For example, in most cases you don't need Options +FollowSymLinks but on some servers you do. The Options directive is used to override the standard settings of the server. Also, mod-rewrite must have been installed when the server was set up. If not you could ask your server admin to enable it for you.

The examples given in previous posts will give you a flavor of what can be done.

[donecweb]

Andy, that was a good explanation except for the "You upload this file in a folder below any of the files you want to effect" Shouldn't that be in a folder above/containing any of the files and folders you want to effect. I don't know much about .htaccess and could be wrong but I have seen other post about it and this is what I thought I understood.

[Andy]

That's what I meant to say, I'll edit my post. Thanks for pointing this out.