file

If you’re running a website, there’s a good chance you’re using an .htaccess file to configure your server. Even if you’re not, you might find some of these tips useful for configuring your .htaccess file.

1. Use mod_rewrite for pretty URLs

If you’re not using mod_rewrite to create pretty URLs, you’re missing out. Pretty URLs are not only more aesthetically pleasing, but they’re also more user-friendly and can even help with your SEO.

To use mod_rewrite, you need to first enable it in your Apache configuration. Then, you can create a .htaccess file in your website’s root directory with the following code:

RewriteEngine on

RewriteRule ^([^/]+)$ /$1.html [L]

This will ensure that all URLs end in .html, which can be more user-friendly than long and ugly URLs with query strings.

2. Set your default character set

If you don’t specify a character set in your .htaccess file, the server will default to ISO-8859-1. This can cause problems if your website is using a different character set, such as UTF-8.

To set the default character set, add the following line to your .htaccess file:

AddDefaultCharset UTF-8

3. Prevent hotlinking

Hotlinking is when someone embeds an image from your website on their own site. This can cause your server to use extra bandwidth and can even slow down your website.

To prevent hotlinking, add the following code to your .htaccess file:

RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http(s)?://(www\.)?yourwebsite.com [NC]

RewriteRule \.(jpg|jpeg|png|gif)$ – [NC,F,L]

This code will block any requests for images from websites other than your own. You can also specify other file types besides images, such as .pdf or .mp3.

4. Enable gzip compression

Gzip compression can reduce the size of your website’s files, which can help reduce your bandwidth usage and even improve your website’s load time.

To enable gzip compression, add the following code to your .htaccess file:

# Compress HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Text, XML and fonts

AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/javascript

AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/rss+xml

AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/vnd.ms-fontobject

AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font

AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-opentype

AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-otf

AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-truetype

AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-ttf

AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-javascript

AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xhtml+xml

AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xml

AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE font/opentype

AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE font/otf

AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE font/ttf

AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE image/svg+xml

AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE image/x-icon

AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/css

AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html

AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/javascript

AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/plain

AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/xml

# Remove browser bugs (only needed for really old browsers)

BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html

BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4\.0[678] no-gzip

BrowserMatch \bMSIE !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html

Header append Vary User-Agent

5. Set your cache expiration date

When a visitor loads a page on your website, their browser will cache that page. This means that the