Apache .htaccess file is at the heart of your web server and control how your website will react to different actions performed by your visitors. I’ve compiled 10+ awesome .htaccess snippets to optimize your website in many ways: Redirections, performances, ease of use… Enjoy!

All of the snippets below have to be pasted into your .htaccess file, which is located on the root of your Apache server.

Waring: Always make sure you have a working backup before editing your .htaccess file!

Force trailing slash

Many clients of mine asked me for always having a trailing slash at the end of their urls. Looks like it’s great for SEO. The following snippet will alwyas add a trailing slash to your site urls.

     
        RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} /+[^\.]+$  RewriteRule ^(.+[^/])$ %{REQUEST_URI}/ [R=301,L] 
     

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Prevent hotlinking

Hotlinking (the act of using images from another site than yours) is unfortunely a common practice which can waste lots of your precious bandwidth. This useful snippets will redirect all hotlinked images to a specific image, defined on line 6.

RewriteEngine On #Replace ?mysite\.com/ with your blog url RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(.+\.)?mysite\.com/ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$ #Replace /images/nohotlink.jpg with your "don't hotlink" image url RewriteRule .*\.(jpe?g|gif|bmp|png)$ /images/nohotlink.jpg [L]

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Redirect mobile devices

If your site is not using  yet, it could be very useful to be able to redirect mobile device to a mobile-specific version of your website.

RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/m/.*$ RewriteCond %{HTTP_ACCEPT} "text/vnd.wap.wml|application/vnd.wap.xhtml+xml" [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} "acs|alav|alca|amoi|audi|aste|avan|benq|bird|blac|blaz|brew|cell|cldc|cmd-" [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} "dang|doco|eric|hipt|inno|ipaq|java|jigs|kddi|keji|leno|lg-c|lg-d|lg-g|lge-" [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT}  "maui|maxo|midp|mits|mmef|mobi|mot-|moto|mwbp|nec-|newt|noki|opwv" [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} "palm|pana|pant|pdxg|phil|play|pluc|port|prox|qtek|qwap|sage|sams|sany" [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} "sch-|sec-|send|seri|sgh-|shar|sie-|siem|smal|smar|sony|sph-|symb|t-mo" [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} "teli|tim-|tosh|tsm-|upg1|upsi|vk-v|voda|w3cs|wap-|wapa|wapi" [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} "wapp|wapr|webc|winw|winw|xda|xda-" [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} "up.browser|up.link|windowssce|iemobile|mini|mmp" [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} "symbian|midp|wap|phone|pocket|mobile|pda|psp" [NC] #------------- The line below excludes the iPad RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !^.*iPad.*$ #------------- RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !macintosh [NC] #*SEE NOTE BELOW RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /m/ [L,R=302]

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Force download of a specific filetype

For some reasons you may need to force download of specific files, such as MP3s or XLS. This code snippets will prevent your visitor’s browser to read the file and force downloading instead.

     
         ForceType application/octet-stream   Header set Content-Disposition attachment 
      
     
         ForceType application/octet-stream   Header set Content-Disposition attachment 
     

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Cross Domain Font embedding for Firefox

When embedding a font, Firefox do not allow you to embed from an external website. Using the .htaccesssnippet below, you can bypass this limitation.

      
      
            Header set Access-Control-Allow-Origin "http://yourdomain.com" 
       
     

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Speed up your site with .htaccess caching

This is probably the most useful snippet of this whole list. By using some simple .htaccess file cahing, you can dramatically increase your website speed. A snippet you should always have on your toolbox!

# 1 YEAR 
     
       Header set Cache-Control "max-age=29030400, public" 
      # 1 WEEK 
     
       Header set Cache-Control "max-age=604800, public" 
      # 2 DAYS 
     
       Header set Cache-Control "max-age=172800, proxy-revalidate" 
      # 1 MIN 
     
       Header set Cache-Control "max-age=60, private, proxy-revalidate" 
     

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Stop spam on your WordPress blog

Sick of spammers on your WordPress blog? Of course, Akismet helps a lot, but your .htaccess file can also help: Today’s recipe is a snippet that prevent spam bots to directly access your wp-comments-post.php file, which is used to post comments on your blog.

     
       RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} POST RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} .wp-comments-post\.php* RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !.*yourdomainname.* [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^$ RewriteRule (.*) ^http://%{REMOTE_ADDR}/$ [R=301,L] 
     

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Redirect different feeds to a single format

Years ago, differents feed formats, such as RSS, Atom or Rdf were used. Nowadays, it seems that RSS is definitely the most used. This snippets allows you to redirect all feeds formats to a single feed. This snippet can be used “as it” on WordPress blogs.

     
        RedirectMatch 301 /feed/(atom|rdf|rss|rss2)/?$ http://example.com/feed/  RedirectMatch 301 /comments/feed/(atom|rdf|rss|rss2)/?$ http://example.com/comments/feed/ 
     

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Configure your website for HTML5 videos

HTML5 is bringing lots of new exiting options in the world of web development. Among other cool features, being able to play videos without using Flash is really cool. Though, you have to configure your server properly to work with the latest HTML5 video standards. This snippet will definitely help.

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !=/favicon.ico AddType video/ogg .ogv AddType video/ogg .ogg AddType video/mp4 .mp4 AddType video/webm .webm AddType application/x-shockwave-flash swf

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Log PHP errors

Instead of displaying PHP errors to your site (and to possible hackers…) this code snippet will log it into a .logfile while hiding errors to visitors.

# display no errs to user php_flag display_startup_errors off php_flag display_errors off php_flag html_errors off # log to file php_flag log_errors on php_value error_log /location/to/php_error.log

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Run PHP inside JavaScript files

When coding in JavaScript, it can very useful to be able to use PHP inside the .js files, for example for retrieving data from your database. Here is a snippet to allow the use of PHP inside .js files.

AddType application/x-httpd-php .js AddHandler x-httpd-php5 .js 
     
       SetHandler application/x-httpd-php 
     

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