1. Custom Directory Index Files

DirectoryIndex index.html index.php index.htm

2. Custom Error Pages

ErrorDocument 404 errors/404.html

ErrorDocument 404 /psych/cgi-bin/error/error?404

3. Control access at files & directory level

# no one gets in here! deny from all

# no nasty crackers in here! order deny,allow deny from all allow from 192.168.0.0/24 # this would do the same thing.. #allow from 192.168.0

# someone else giving the ruskies a bad name.. order allow,deny deny from 83.222.23.219 allow from all

4. Modifying the Environment Variable

SetEnv SITE_WEBMASTER "Jack Sprat" SetEnv SITE_WEBMASTER_URI mailto:[email protected] UnSetEnv REMOTE_ADDR

5. 301 Redirect using htaccess

Redirect 301 /old/file.html http://yourdomain.com/new/file.html

RedirectMatch 301 /blog(.*) http://yourdomain.com/$1

6. Implementing a Caching Scheme with .htaccess

# year < FilesMatch "\ . ( ico | pdf | flv | jpg | jpeg | png | gif | swf | mp3 | mp4 )$"> Header set Cache-Control "public" Header set Expires "Thu, 15 Apr 2010 20:00:00 GMT" Header unset Last-Modified </ FilesMatch > #2 hours < FilesMatch "\ . ( html | htm | xml | txt | xsl )$"> Header set Cache-Control "max-age=7200, must-revalidate" </ FilesMatch > < FilesMatch "\ . ( js | css )$"> SetOutputFilter DEFLATE Header set Expires "Thu, 15 Apr 2010 20:00:00 GMT" </ FilesMatch >

7. Compress output using GZIP

< IfModule mod_gzip.c > mod_gzip_on Yes mod_gzip_dechunk Yes mod_gzip_item_include file \.(html?|txt|css|js|php|pl)$ mod_gzip_item_include handler ^cgi-script$ mod_gzip_item_include mime ^text/.* mod_gzip_item_include mime ^application/x-javascript.* mod_gzip_item_exclude mime ^image/.* mod_gzip_item_exclude rspheader ^Content-Encoding:.*gzip.* </ IfModule >

< Location > SetOutputFilter DEFLATE SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \ \.(?:gif|jpe?g|png)$ no-gzip dont-vary SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \ \.(?:exe|t?gz|zip|gz2|sit|rar)$ no-gzip dont-vary </ Location >

< FilesMatch "\ . ( txt | html | htm | php )"> php_value output_handler ob_gzhandler </ FilesMatch >

8. Redirect browser to https (ssl)

RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !on RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI}

9. Rewrite URLs using htacccess

RewriteEngine on RewriteRule ^product-([0-9]+)\.html$ product.php?id=$1

RewriteEngine on RewriteRule ^product/([a-zA-Z0-9_-]+)/([0-9]+)\.html$ product.php?id=$2

RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^viralpatel\.net$ RewriteRule (.*) http://www.viralpatel.net/$1 [R=301,L]

RewriteEngine On RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9_-]+)$ user.php?username=$1 RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9_-]+)/$ user.php?username=$1

RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^test\.com$ [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.test\.com$ RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/new/ RewriteRule (.*) /new/$1

10. Prevent Directory Listing

Options -Indexes

IndexIgnore *

11. Adding new MIME types

AddType application/x-endnote-connection enz AddType application/x-endnote-filter enf AddType application/x-spss-savefile sav

12. Deny access to static file data

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$ RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/(wp-login.php|wp-admin/|wp-content/plugins/|wp-includes/).* [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.askapache.com.*$ [NC] RewriteRule \.(ico|pdf|flv|jpg|jpeg|mp3|mpg|mp4|mov|wav|wmv|png|gif|swf|css|js)$ - [F,NS,L]

13. Specify Upload file limit for PHP in htaccess

php_value upload_max_filesize 20M php_value post_max_size 20M php_value max_execution_time 200 php_value max_input_time 200

14. Disallow Script Execution

Options -ExecCGI AddHandler cgi-script .php .pl .py .jsp .asp .htm .shtml .sh .cgi

15. Change Charset and Language headers

AddDefaultCharset UTF-8 DefaultLanguage en-US

16. Set Timezone of the Server (GMT)

SetEnv TZ America/Indianapolis

17. Force “File Save As” Prompt

AddType application/octet-stream .avi .mpg .mov .pdf .xls .mp4

18. Protecting a single file

directive you can restrict it to specific files: < Files quiz.html > order deny,allow deny from all AuthType Basic AuthName "Characterology Student Authcate" AuthLDAP on AuthLDAPServer ldap://directory.characterology.com/ AuthLDAPBase "ou=Student, o=Characterology University, c=au" require valid-user satisfy any </ Files > 19. Set Cookie using htaccess Set Cookie with environment variable Header set Set-Cookie "language=%{lang}e; path=/;" env=lang Set Cookie based on Request. This code sends the Set-Cookie header to create a cookie on the client with the value of a matching item in 2nd parentheses. RewriteEngine On RewriteBase / RewriteRule ^(.*)(de|es|fr|it|ja|ru|en)/$ - [co=lang:$2:.yourserver.com:7200:/] 20. Send Custom Headers Header set P3P "policyref=\"http://www.askapache.com/w3c/p3p.xml\"" Header set X-Pingback "http://www.askapache.com/xmlrpc.php" Header set Content-Language "en-US" Header set Vary "Accept-Encoding" 21. Blocking request based on User-Agent Header SetEnvIfNoCase ^User-Agent$ .*(craftbot|download|extract|stripper|sucker|ninja|clshttp|webspider|leacher|collector|grabber|webpictures) HTTP_SAFE_BADBOT SetEnvIfNoCase ^User-Agent$ .*(libwww-perl|aesop_com_spiderman) HTTP_SAFE_BADBOT Deny from env=HTTP_SAFE_BADBOT Feel free to bookmark this article.

Apache web servers has a great way to manipulate information usingfiles.is the default name of a directory-level configuration file that allows for decentralized management of web server configuration. Theis placed inside the web tree, and is able to override a subset of the server’s global configuration; the extent of this subset is defined by the web server administrator. The original purpose of .htaccess was to allow per-directory access control (e.g. requiring a password to access the content), hence the name. Nowadays .htaccess can override many other configuration settings, mostly related to content control, e.g. content type and character set, CGI handlers, etc. Following are few very useful htaccess tricks.You can change a default index file of directory by using above snippet in your htaccess file. If a user request, Apache will serve up, or whatever file you specify.You may want to redirect your users to an error page is any of the http errors like 404 occurs. You can use above snippet in htaccess file to map 404 error to error page errors/404.html. Also you may want to write a common page for all the http errors as follows:.htaccess is most often used to restrict or deny access to individual files and folders. A typical example would be an “includes” folder. Your site’s pages can call these included scripts all they like, but you don’t want users accessing these files directly, over the web. In that case you would drop an .htaccess file in the includes folder with content something like this.which would deny ALL direct access to ANY files in that folder. You can be more specific with your conditions, for instance limiting access to a particular IP range, here’s a handy top-level rule for a local test server.Generally these sorts of requests would bounce off your firewall anyway, but on a live server they become useful for filtering out undesirable IP blocks, known risks, lots of things. Sometimes, you will only want to ban one IP, perhaps some persistent robot that doesn’t play by the rules.Environment variables contain information used by server-side includes and CGI. Set / Unset environment variables usingandIf you want to redirect from an old document to new:Use following for redirecting Entire Directory.Cache the static files and improve your website’s performance. (read this article: PHP, CSS, JS Compression for full implementation)Add following snippet into your htaccess file and compress all the css, js, html files with GZip compression.Above code works only if mod_gzip module is enabled in your webserver. You may want to add following snippet if your webserver provides mod_deflate support.If your webserver does not support mod_deflate then you may want to use following snippet.Read this articles for more detail: Compressing PHP, CSS, JavaScript(JS) Add following snippet to your htaccess and redirect entire website to https.Rewriting product.php?id=12 to product-12.htmlRewriting product.php?id=12 to product/ipod-nano/12.htmlRedirecting non www URL to www URLRewriting yoursite.com/user.php?username=xyz to yoursite.com/xyzRedirecting the domain to a new subfolder of inside public_htmlAdd any of the following snippet to avoid directory listing.orRead this article on more details on Denying/Allowing directory listing The type of file depends on the filename extension. Unrecognized file extensions are treated as text data, and corrupted on download.Denies any request for static files (images, css, etc) if referrer is not local site or empty.In the above .htaccess file, uploading capability is increased by the four parameter first one is maximum file size for uploading, second one is maximum size of the post data , third one is maximum time in seconds a script is allowed to run before it is terminated by the parser and last one is maximum time in seconds a script is allowed to parse input data such as like file uploads, POST and GET data.Normally .htaccess applies to the entire directory. With the