How to Figure Out .htaccess Quickly
Being that this is something that I just had to figure out today, I thought I’d post up my notes which I found helpful on this topic. Let me know if you think anything else should be added.
.htaccess files are/have/etc:
created in notepad
have no file name or different extension - just .htaccess (not file.htaccess)
chmod to 644 (makes it usable by the server but prevents browser use)
.htaccess is for Apache not NT servers
.htaccess files effect the directory they are in and all sub-directories
.htaccess in child folders overrule .htaccess in it’s parent’s folders
Things .htaccess can do:
- mod_rewrite
- password protection
- enabling SSI
- blocking users by IP
- blocking users/ sites by referrer
- blocking bad bots and site rippers
- change your default directory page
- redirects
- prevent viewing of .htaccess
- adding MIMI types
- prevent hot linking of your images and other files
- prevent directory listing
It’s use is pretty straightforward. You just have to learn the syntax. For example, here’s how you…
1) Open notepad
2) Type this:
Redirect /olddirectory/oldfile.html http://yoursite.com/newdirect
3) Save as .htaccess (make sure to change ’save as’ type to ‘All Files’)
Additional notes on the redirect function:
- the code should be on one line
- it can also be used to redirect a whole directory…
Ex:
Redirect /olddirectory http://yoursite.com/newdirectory/
IndexIgnore *
- put this in the images folder to prevent any files from being listed
IndexIgnore *.gif *.jpg
- put this in a folder to allow all but gif and jpeg files to be listed
Options +Indexes
- put this in any folder to allow access to that folder’s files
Other helpful htaccess links:
http://www.javascriptkit.com/howto/htaccess.shtml
- pretty nice intro tutorial
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/1.3/mod/directives.html
- official list of complete Apache server directives for .htaccess
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Htaccess
- quick overview with decent links
http://www.thejackol.com/htaccess-cheatsheet/
- a pretty cool quicklist
8 Comments, Comment or Ping
johno
Just a small note: if one is redirecting, then it’s a good idea to add a 301 status code, showing that the redirect is permanent (which in most cases it is), so
Redirect 301 /olddirectory http://yoursite.com/newdirectory/
Aug 25th, 2007
dennisplucinik
Agreed. Unfortunately I broke that little rule recently… a lot. This blog was hosted on the Wordpress server and when I moved here, I exported the posts from there and imported them here but there was no way to 301 the existing pages here.
So I deleted all the posts from the Wordpress server and put up a new post that says “This site moved here: [link]”
I know it’s bad. There has to be some way to do it. I can’t imagine EVERYONE who moves from the Wordpress server to their own as their blog grows has to lose all their built up ranking.
Aug 26th, 2007
johno
Dennis
You could have used one line of mod_rewrite rules (with the rewrite engine on, allows you to use regular expressions) and redirected every post on the old server to the version on your new server.
Something like this:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://dennisplucinik..com/$1 [R=301,L]
Then once Google et. al. have caught on, you can delete the old site.
Haven’t had time to check the above rule, but this or something similar would do the trick.
Aug 26th, 2007
johno
Oh, and I forgot to mention the Permanent Redirect Plugin (for WordPress hosted blogs):
http://fucoder.com/code/permalink-redirect/
Aug 26th, 2007
Lorna
Very helpful links, thanks for the tips. I tried to modify my.htaccess once and someone in #Linux gave me a link to the mod_rewrite page in the Apache web site and asked me to read and understand it myself. [sarcastic]That was very helpful[/sarcastic].
Aug 26th, 2007
dennisplucinik
Johno, I’m just getting familiar with Wordpress and I know very well how inportant 301 redirects are. I suppose I should have looked into it a little more. Suffice it to say that since having moved form Wordpress to my own server, the traffic here has increased 5 - 10 fold. I’ll most likely eventually delete the old blog entirely so Goggle gets it out of it’s index.
Lorna, that’s typical of a cocky linux user lol (j/k) - I feel like sometimes a quick run through tutorial/brief like this is better than the long drawn out article. At least for me anyways.
Aug 26th, 2007
johno
That’s great news about the increase in traffic!
Yes, it might be time to delete the old blog. Google does not take kindly to duplicate content–it’s perceived as a form of spam content. So, upon deleting the old blog, you may even see a further jump in traffic.
ps: the RSS feed in the footer has the wrong link. Not a big problem, because I could subsrcibe through the link in the header.
Aug 26th, 2007
dennisplucinik
That is strange. I’ll fix that right now, thanks for pointing it out.
Aug 26th, 2007
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