Htaccess Tricks

So, you can get to a website by typing http://mydomain.com or by
typing http://www.mydomain.com, should this matter to you? Yep. Search engines like Google doesn’t like
when you have duplicate content on a website, this can significantly decrease your search engine ranking. To make
sure that Google doesn’t index the content to the ‘non-www’ and the ‘www’ versions the same, it’s a good idea to
force the www in the URL when people access your website.
Below is the code you’ll need to add to your .htaccess
file to force/add the www to your URL. Replace ‘example’ with your domain name

# force www in url
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.example.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]
# END force www in url

mod_gzip is an external extension module for Apache that allows
you to quickly and easily compress your files before you send them to the client. By using this simple .htaccess
file cahing, you can save bandwidth and drastically increase your website’s speed.

# file caching
# 1 YEAR
<FilesMatch ".(ico|pdf|flv)$">
Header set Cache-Control "max-age=29030400, public"
</FilesMatch>
# 1 WEEK
<FilesMatch ".(jpg|jpeg|png|gif|swf)$">
Header set Cache-Control "max-age=604800, public"
</FilesMatch>
# 2 DAYS
<FilesMatch ".(xml|txt|css|js)$">
Header set Cache-Control "max-age=172800, proxy-revalidate"
</FilesMatch>
# 1 MIN
<FilesMatch ".(html|htm|php)$">
Header set Cache-Control "max-age=60, private, proxy-revalidate"
</FilesMatch>
# END caching

First, you may need to enable directory listing by adding

Options +Indexes

to your .htaccess file.
Now you may improve the listing by adding:

IndexIgnore htaccess header.html icons robots.txt
IndexOptions IgnoreCase FancyIndexing FoldersFirst NameWidth=* DescriptionWidth=* SuppressHTMLPreamble
HeaderName header.html
AddIcon icons/image.png .jpg .jpeg .png .gif</p>

To force SSL (https://) on a single URL

# redirect for http /buy page
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} =80
RewriteRule ^buy/?$ https://mysite.com/buy [R=301,QSA,L,NE]

To force SSL (https://) on a entire domain

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} 80
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://domain.com/$1 [R,L]

php_value date.timezone "America/Chicago"

AddType application/octet-stream .zip .mp3 .mp4

To setup error documents, for example for ‘401 Unauthorised’, ‘403
Forbidden’, and ‘500 Internal Server’ error messages, create a .htaccess file with the following:

ErrorDocument 401 /error_pages/401.html
ErrorDocument 404 /error_pages/404.html
ErrorDocument 500 /error_pages/500.html

Create directory “error_pages” and add a 401.html, 404.html and 500.html file with desired error
messages.

To set-up visitors restrictions and blocking, create a .htaccess file
which includes the following text:

order allow,deny
deny from 255.0.0.0
deny from 123.45.6.
allow from all

To set-up blocking of all visitors except yourself, create a .htaccess file with the
following:

order allow,deny
allow from 255.0.0.0
deny from all

To enable this, create a .htaccess file and include the following
text:

<FilesMatch "^php5?.(ini|cgi)$">
Order Deny,Allow
Deny from All
Allow from env=REDIRECT_STATUS
</FilesMatch>

To begin, decide which directory you would like to password protect (note
that all files and subdirectories within the directory will be password protected), then create a .htaccess file
with the following text within that folder (additionally run “htpasswd -c /var/.htpasswd admin” without the quotes
from the terminal to create the user account for accessing the directory):

AuthName "Member's Area Name"
AuthUserFile /path/to/password/file/.htpasswd
AuthType Basic
require valid-user

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