What is htaccess

.htaccess is a configuration file for use on web servers running on the web apache server software. when a .htaccess file is placed in a directory which in turn loaded via the Apache web server, then the .htaccess file detected and executed by the Apache server software. .htaccess files can be utilized to modify the setup of the Apache server software to empower additional functionality and fetures that the apache web server softwatre brings to the table. We can use the .htaccess file for alteration various configuration in apache web server software. Some of them are listed below:

ErrorDocuments :-

Password protection :-

Redirection:-

Deny visitors by IP address:-

Adding MIME types

GENERAL INSTRUCTIONS

Create a plain text .htaccess file.
Use FTP to upload the file to the document root of the appropriate domain. If your domain is example.com, you should upload the file to: www.example.com/

Introduction :- Url rewriting means modify url's appearance. rebuild an url to a new url or make a user or search engine friendly url. url rewrite depends on mod_rewrite must be enabled on Apache server. The main purpose of url rewrite to make clean url most of sites have dynamic variables in url like:-http://example.com/example.php?x=xx&y=yyThis is not a readable url or not useful for search engine and also not define to page purpose so using url rewrite we can get a shorter and standard url like:-http://example.com/example/xx/yyThese type of url easier to read, remember and much clean. we can also do more effort to make it more clean.

Url rewrite Flags :- Some of common used url rewrite flags
L - Last, to stop processing no further rules will be processed
N - Next, flag start ruleset again from the top
NC - NOcase, means case-insensitive
R - Redirect
QSA - query string append

How to redirect www.itechtuto.com to itechtuto.com

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www¥.styleguts¥.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^/?$ "http¥:¥/¥/styleguts¥.com¥/" [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^([^¥.]+)$ $1.php [NC,L]

How to redirect itechtuto.com to http://itechtuto.com

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www¥.styleguts¥.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://styleguts.com/$1 [L,R=301]

Examples of url rewriting :-

Remove.php extension from url :- To remove.php extension like if you want change http://example.com/myfile.php to http://example.com/myfile add below code to .htaccess
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^([^¥.]+)$ $1.php [NC,L]

if you want to give a specfic name to file like http://www.example.com/myfile.php to http://www.example.com/something

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^something/?$ myfile.php [NC,L]

Redirect non www to www url :-

if you want url with www redirection or add a www in url add below code to your .htaccess.

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example.com$
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Remove www from url.

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www¥.gamesaroma¥.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^/?$ "http¥:¥/¥/gamesaroma¥.com¥/" [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^([^¥.]+)$ $1.php [NC,L]

Redirect errror page.

• ErrorDocument 404 /error-code.php
• ErrorDocument 400 /error-code.php
• ErrorDocument 401 /error-code.php
• ErrorDocument 403 /error-code.php
• ErrorDocument 500 /error-code.php
• ErrorDocument 502 /error-code.php
• ErrorDocument 504 /error-code.php

# If we don't have mod_rewrite installed, all 404's
# can be sent to index.php, and everything works as normal.
# Submitted by: ElliotHaughin
ErrorDocument 404 /index.php

Remove index.php from url in Codeigniter

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /gmax_Admin
##RewriteRule ^$ /gmax_admin/index.php [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?/$1 [L]

Dynamic pattern :-

rewrite with specific name applied for a single url rewrite for multiple or dynamic url rewriting you need to use regular expressions in pattern like :-
if you using query string in url like http://www.example.com/myfile.php?id=7 and want to change http://www.example.com/myfile/7 then use

RewriteRule ^myfile/([a-zA-Z0-9]+)/?$ myfile.php?id=$1 [NC,L,QSA]
# getting all numeric and alphabet
// if you want to check with only numeric
RewriteRule ^myfile/([0-9]+)/?$ myfile.php?id=$1 [NC,L,QSA]
#applying numeric pattern

Some of meta character used in regular expressions:-

. - any character
* - preceding start from zero
+ - preceding start from one
{} - min to max quantifier
? - ungreedy modifier
^ - must be start
$ - end of string
[] - class, apply more match
- - range if used in class
() - group
| - or
¥ - escape character

This .htaccess file will redirect http://example.com/folder1/ to http://example.com/folder2/.

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^folder1.*$ http://example.com/folder2/ [R=301,L]

This .htaccess file will redirect http://example.com/folder1/ to plain http://example.com/.

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^folder1.*$ http://example.com/ [R=301,L]

This .htaccess file will redirect http://example.com/folder1/file.html to http://example.com/folder2/file.html.

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^folder1/(.*)$ http://gs.mt-example.com/folder2/$1 [R=301,L]

Code explanation

1. Options +FollowSymLinks is an Apache directive, prerequisite for mod_rewrite.

2. RewriteEngine On enables mod_rewrite.

3. RewriteRule defines a particular rule.

4. The first string of characters after RewriteRule defines what the original URL looks like. There's a more detailed explanation of the special characters at the end of this article.

5. The second string after RewriteRule defines the new URL. This is in relation to the document root (html) directory. / means the html directory itself, and subfolders can also be specified. $1 at the end matches the part in parentheses () from the first string. Basically, this makes sure that sub-pages get redirected to the same sub-page and not the main page. Leave it out to redirect to the main page. (It is left out in the first two examples for this reason. If you don't have the same content in the new directory that you had in the old directory, leave this out.)

6. [R=301,L] - this performs a 301 redirect and also stops any later rewrite rules from affecting this URL (a good idea to add after the last rule). It's on the same line as RewriteRule, at the end.

This .htaccess file will redirect http://example.com/file.html to http://example.com/folder1/file.html:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} example.com$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !folder1
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://example.com/folder1/$1 [R=301,L]

Code explanation

1. Options +FollowSymLinks is an Apache directive, prerequisite for mod_rewrite.

2. RewriteEngine On enables mod_rewrite.

3. RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} shows which URLs we do and don't want to run through the rewrite.

In this case, we want to match example.com.

! means "not." We don't want to rewrite a URL that already includes folder1, because then it would keep getting folder1 added, and it would become an infinitely long URL.

4. [NC] matches both upper- and lower-case versions of the URL.

5. RewriteRule defines a particular rule.

6. The first string of characters after RewriteRule defines what the original URL looks like. There's a more detailed explanation of the special characters at the end of this article.

7. The second string after RewriteRule defines the new URL. This is in relation to the document root (html) directory. / means the html directory itself, and subfolders can also be specified.

$1 at the end matches the part in parentheses () from the first string. Basically, this makes sure that sub-pages get redirected to the same sub-page and not the main page. Leave it out to redirect to the main page of the subdirectory.

8. [R=301,L] - this performs a 301 redirect and also stops any later rewrite rules from affecting this URL (a good idea to add after the last rule). It's on the same line as RewriteRule, at the end.

This .htaccess file will redirect http://example.com/ to http://www.example.com/.

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]

This .htaccess file will redirect http://example.com/ to https://example.com/.

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

REGULAR EXPRESSIONS

^ begins the line to match.
$ ends the line to match.
So, ^folder1$ matches folder1 exactly.
. stands for "any non-whitespace character" (example: a, B, 3).
* means that the previous character can be matched zero or more times.
So, ^uploads.*$ matches uploads2009, uploads2010, etc.
^.*$ means "match anything and everything." This is useful if you don't know what your users might type for the URL.
() designates which portion to preserve for use again in the $1 variable in the second string. This is useful for handling requests for particular files that should be the same in the old and new versions of the URL.

Redirect an old domain to a new domain

If you had an old domain such as example.com, and now you decided you actually want to use example.net for the website. You could setup a 301 redirect for the entire domain, so that old links to example.com carry over.
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.example.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://example.net/$1 [L,R=301,NC]

Force www. version of domain to be used

If you have a lot of links on the web where people are linking to your site as example.com, but you would like your visitors to instead end up at www.example.com you can force this version of your domain with these rules:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [L,R=301,NC]

Force non www. version of domain to be used

If you have a lot of links on the web where people are linking to your site as www.example.com, but you would like your visitors to instead end up at example.com you can force this version of your domain with these rules:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.example.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://example.com/$1 [L,R=301,NC]

Redirect all files with certain extension

To re-direct all of one type of file to another, such as example.com/file.php to example.com/file.htm
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} .php$
RewriteRule ^(.*).php$ /$1.htm [R=301,L]

Redirecting HTTP to HTTPS

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !on$
RewriteRule ^(.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]

Redirect example.com to www.example.com:

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

Redirect www.example.com to example.com:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www¥.example¥.com$
RewriteRule ^/?$ "http¥:¥/¥/example¥.com¥/" [R=301,L]

Redirect to example.com/index.php

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example.com$
RewriteRule ^$ http://example.com/index.php [L,R=301]

How to add a trailing slash

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !example.php
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(.*)/$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://example.com/$1/ [L,R=301]

Removing Extensions such as .php, .html, .htm etc.

To remove the .php extension from a PHP file for example gmaxlifesciences.com/index.php to gmaxlifescineces.com/index you have to add the following code inside the .htaccess file:

If you want to remove the .html extension from a html file for example gmaxlifesciences.com/index.html to gmaxlifesciences.com/index you simply have to alter the last line from the code above to match the filename:
RewriteRule ^([^¥.]+)$ $1.html [NC,L]

You can now link pages inside the HTML document without needing to add the extension of the page. For example:
<a href="http://gmaxlifesciences.com/index" title="wallpaper">wallpaper</a>

Adding a trailing slash at the end

Note :-

Attention GoDaddy users: In order to remove the extensions you need to enable MultiViews before. The code should look like this:
Options +MultiViews
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^([^¥.]+)$ $1.php [NC,L]

Remove user.php?id=31

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^(.*) $1 [L]
RewriteRule ^products/$ products.php?id=31 [L]

For More Details : Click on link.

To prevent the directory access of server files using htaccess.

Options -Indexes

To prevent the directory access of server files using htaccess. sucs images of your folder. So if any try to access your server like domainname.com/images/ or js/ etc. , it shows 403 error.

write this line in your htaccess file.
1. Options +Indexes
2. Options -Indexes

To prevent listing '.zip' files, create a .htaccess file following the main instructions and guidance which includes the following text:
IndexIgnore *.zip

To prevent listing multiple file types, create a .htaccess file following the main instructions and guidance which includes the following text:
IndexIgnore *.zip *.jpg *.gif

OR

# the following prevents display of the filetohide file
<files filetohide.jpg>
order allow,deny
deny from all
</files>

Redirect domain according to country IP address using php | .htaccess

First you need to check that you have the mod_geoip module (GeoIP Extension) installed and configured on your server, If yes then tweak your .htaccess file accordingly..

By PHP

How to Block IP Address from accessing your website using .htaccess

To block certain ip address from accessing your website.

order allow,deny
deny from 192.168.0.100
allow from all

Password protection

The first line tells the Apache Web Server the secure directory is called 'Admin Area', this will be displayed when the pop-up login prompt appears. The subsequent line indicates the location of the password file. The third line determines the authentication type, in this example, we are using 'Basic' because we are using basic HTTP authentication lastly the fourth line indicates that we require valid login credentials

Adding MIME types