Useful Apache .htaccess Tutorial Examples, Tips – Commands & Directives

Whatever you wanto call this, a cheat sheet, a real thin manual, or anything, we simplify the use of .htaccess as much as possible and make it do more for you with less hassle.

1. Unify example.com and www.example.com!
   
   

   # Use a 301 redirect from example.com to www.example.com to tell SEs that the 2 domains are the same thing so there's no PageRank leakage.
   RewriteEngine On
   RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example\.com [NC]
   RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301]

2. Block spammers!
   
   

   # This blocks xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx and *.example.com from accessing your site.
   <limit GET POST PUT>
   order deny,allow
   deny from xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
   deny from .example.com
   allow from all
   </limit>

3. Change default page!
   
   

   # The order is followed as specified:
   DirectoryIndex default.htm default.php index.html index.php

4. Enable directory browsing!
   
   

   Options +Indexes
   # block a few types of files from showing:
   IndexIgnore *.wmv *.mp4 *.avi

5. Disable directory browsing!
   
   

   Options All -Indexes

6. Customize error messages!
   
   

   ErrorDocument 403 /forbidden.html
   ErrorDocument 404 /notfound.html
   ErrorDocument 500 /servererror.html

7. Get SSI working with HTML/SHTML!
   
   

   AddType text/html .html
   AddType text/html .shtml
   AddHandler server-parsed .html
   AddHandler server-parsed .shtml

8. Redirect it!
   
   

   Redirect oldpage.html http://www.domainname.com/newpage.html

9. Block visits or leeches from specific referers!
   
   

   RewriteEngine on
   RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} site-to-block\.com [NC]
   RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} site-to-block-2\.com [NC]
   RewriteRule .* - [F]

10. Stop a file from being viewed!
    
    

    # mycontacts.txt cannot be accessed by any means:
    <files mycontacts.txt>
    order allow,deny
    deny from all
    </files>

11. Change script extensions!
    
    

    # anyfile.kv will be treated like a PHP script:
    AddType application/x-httpd-php .kv
    # anyfile.kvcgi will be treated like a CGI script:
    AddType application/x-httpd-cgi .kvcgi