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htaccess
Introduction
In this tutorial you will find out about the .htaccess file and the power it has to improve your
website. Although .htaccess is only a file, it can change settings on the servers and allow you to
do many different things, the most popular being able to have your own custom 404 error
pages. .htaccess isn't difficult to use and is really just made up of a few simple instructions in a
text file.

Will My Host Support It?

This is probably the hardest question to give a simple answer to. Many hosts support .htaccess
but don't actually publicise it and many other hosts have the capability but do not allow their users
to have a .htaccess file. As a general rule, if your server runs Unix or Linux, or any version of the
Apache web server it will support .htaccess, although your host may not allow you to use it.

A good sign of whether your host allows .htaccess files is if they support password protection of
folders. To do this they will need to offer .htaccess (although in a few cases they will offer
password protection but not let you use .htaccess). The best thing to do if you are unsure is to
either upload your own .htaccess file and see if it works or e-mail your web host and ask them.

What Can I Do?

You may be wondering what .htaccess can do, or you may have read about some of its uses but
don't realise how many things you can actually do with it.

There is a huge range of things .htaccess can do including: password protecting folders,
redirecting users automatically, custom error pages, changing your file extensions, banning users
with certian IP addresses, only allowing users with certain IP addresses, stopping directory
listings and using a different file as the index file.

Creating A .htaccess File

Creating a .htaccess file may cause you a few problems. Writing the file is easy, you just need
enter the appropriate code into a text editor (like notepad). You may run into problems with saving
the file. Because .htaccess is a strange file name (the file actually has no name but a 8 letter file
extension) it may not be accepted on certain systems (e.g. Windows 3.1). With most operating
systems, though, all you need to do is to save the file by entering the name as:

".htaccess"

(including the quotes). If this doesn't work, you will need to name it something else (e.g.
htaccess.txt) and then upload it to the server. Once you have uploaded the file you can then
rename it using an FTP program.

Warning
Before beginning using .htaccess, I should give you one warning. Although using .htaccess on
your server is extremely unlikely to cause you any problems (if something is wrong it simply won't
work), you should be wary if you are using the Microsoft FrontPage Extensions. The FrontPage
extensions use the .htaccess file so you should not really edit it to add your own information. If
you do want to (this is not recommended, but possible) you should download the .htaccess file
from your server first (if it exists) and then add your code to the beginning.
Custom Error Pages
The first use of the .htaccess file which I will cover is custom error pages. These will allow you to
have your own, personal error pages (for example when a file is not found) instead of using your
host's error pages or having no page. This will make your site seem much more professional in
the unlikely event of an error. It will also allow you to create scripts to notify you if there is an error
(for example I use a PHP script on Free Webmaster Help to automatically e-mail me when a page
is not found).

You can use custom error pages for any error as long as you know its number (like 404 for page
not found) by adding the following to your .htaccess file:

ErrorDocument errornumber /file.html

For example if I had the file notfound.html in the root direct

ory of my site and I wanted to use it for a 404 error I would use:

ErrorDocument 404 /notfound.html

If the file is not in the root directory of your site, you just need to put the path to it:

ErrorDocument 500 /errorpages/500.html

These are some of the most common errors:

401 - Authorization Required

400 - Bad request
403 - Forbidden
500 - Internal Server Error
404 - Wrong page

Then, all you need to do is to create a file to display when the error happens and upload it and
the .htaccess file.

Htacess Commands

Introduction
In the last part I introduced you to .htaccess and some of its useful features. In this part I will
show you how to use the .htaccess file to implement some of these.

Stop A Directory Index From Being Shown

Sometimes, for one reason or another, you will have no index file in your directory. This will, of
course, mean that if someone types the directory name into their browser, a full listing of all the
files in that directory will be shown. This could be a security risk for your site.

To prevent against this (without creating lots of new 'index' files, you can enter a command into
your .htaccess file to stop the directory list from being shown:

Options -Indexes

Deny/Allow Certian IP Addresses

In some situations, you may want to only allow people with specific IP addresses to access your
site (for example, only allowing people using a particular ISP to get into a certian directory) or you
may want to ban certian IP addresses (for example, keeping disruptive memembers out of your
message boards). Of course, this will only work if you know the IP addresses you want to ban
and, as most people on the internet now have a dynamic IP address, so this is not always the
best way to limit usage.

You can block an IP address by using:

deny from 000.000.000.000

where 000.000.000.000 is the IP address. If you only specify 1 or 2 of the groups of numbers, you
will block a whole range.

You can allow an IP address by using:

allow from 000.000.000.000

where 000.000.000.000 is the IP address. If you only specify 1 or 2 of the groups of numbers, you
will allow a whole range.

If you want to deny everyone from accessing a directory, you can use:

deny from all

but this will still allow scripts to use the files in the directory.

Alternative Index Files

You may not always want to use index.htm or index.html as your index file for a directory, for
example if you are using PHP files in your site, you may want index.php to be the index file for a
directory. You are not limited to 'index' files though. Using .htaccess you can set foofoo.blah to be
your index file if you want to!

Alternate index files are entered in a list. The server will work from left to right, checking to see if
each file exists, if none of them exisit it will display a directory listing (unless, of course, you have
turned this off).

DirectoryIndex index.php index.php3 messagebrd.pl index.html index.htm

Redirection
One of the most useful functions of the .htaccess file is to redirect requests to different files, either
on the same server, or on a completely different web site. It can be extremely useful if you
change the name of one of your files but allow users to still find it. Another use (which I find very
useful) is to redirect to a longer URL, for example in my newsletters I can use a very short URL
for my affiliate links. The following can be done to redirect a specific file:

Redirect /location/from/root/file.ext http://www.othersite.com/new/file/location.xyz

In this above example, a file in the root directory called oldfile.html would be entered as:

/oldfile.html
and a file in the old subdirectory would be entered as:

/old/oldfile.html

You can also redirect whole directoires of your site using the .htaccess file, for example if you had
a directory called olddirectory on your site and you had set up the same files on a new site at:
http://www.newsite.com/newdirectory/ you could redirect all the files in that directory without
having to specify each one:

Redirect /olddirectory http://www.newsite.com/newdirectory

Then, any request to your site below /olddirectory will bee redirected to the new site, with the
extra information in the URL added on, for example if someone typed in:

http://www.youroldsite.com/olddirecotry/oldfiles/images/image.gif

They would be redirected to:

http://www.newsite.com/newdirectory/oldfiles/images/image.gif

This can prove to be extremely powerful if used correctly.

Password Protection

Introduction
Although there are many uses of the .htaccess file, by far the most popular, and probably most
useful, is being able to relaibly password protect directories on websites. Although JavaScript etc.
can also be used to do this, only .htaccess has total security (as someone must know the
password to get into the directory, there are no 'back doors')

The .htaccess File

Adding password protection to a directory using .htaccess takes two stages. The first part is to
add the appropriate lines to your .htaccess file in the directory you would like to protect.
Everything below this directory will be password protected:

AuthName "Section Name"

AuthType Basic
AuthUserFile /full/path/to/.htpasswd
Require valid-user

There are a few parts of this which you will need to change for your site. You should replace
"Section Name" with the name of the part of the site you are protecting e.g. "Members Area".

The /full/parth/to/.htpasswd should be changed to reflect the full server path to the .htpasswd file
(more on this later). If you do not know what the full path to your webspace is, contact your
system administrator for details.

The .htpasswd File

Password protecting a directory takes a little more work than any of the other .htaccess functions
because you must also create a file to contain the usernames and passwords which are allowed
to access the site. These should be placed in a file which (by default) should be called .htpasswd.
Like the .htaccess file, this is a file with no name and an 8 letter extension. This can be placed
anywhere within you website (as the passwords are encrypted) but it is advisable to store it
outside the web root so that it is impossible to access it from the web.

Entering Usernames And Passwords

Once you have created your .htpasswd file (you can do this in a standard text editor) you must
enter the usernames and passwords to access the site. They should be entered as follows:

username:password

where the password is the encrypted format of the password. To encrypt the password you will
either need to use one of the premade scripts available on the web or write your own. There is a
good username/password service at the KxS site which will allow you to enter the user name and
password and will output it in the correct format.

For multiple users, just add extra lines to your .htpasswd file in the same format as the first. There
are even scripts available for free which will manage the .htpasswd file and will allow automatic
adding/removing of users etc.

Accessing The Site

When you try to access a site which has been protected by .htaccess your browser will pop up a
standard username/password dialog box. If you don't like this, there are certain scripts available
which allow you to embed a username/password box in a website to do the authentication. You
can also send the username and password (unencrypted) in the URL as follows:

http://username:[email protected]/directory/

Summary
.htaccess is one of the most useful files a webmaster can use. There are a wide variety of
different uses for it which can save time and increase security on your website.