Using the .htaccess File & .Htaccess Blocking

Using the .htaccess File

Web designers often ask how to handle redirects or to password protect directories. The .htaccess file can do these things and more. For this article Miraz Jordan has collated various tips mentioned on the Wisewomen mailing list, and from several other sources.

What the .htaccess file can do

1. If you’re reorganising your site and moving pages around, you can use the .htaccess file to redirect visitors from the old page to the new one.
2. Another function of the .htaccess file is to allow you to serve up pages which include PHP or Server Side Includes (SSI) but whose file name still uses the .htm or .html extension.
3. Allow or prevent directory browsing.
4. Because the server should check the .htaccess file before anything is delivered to the client, you can use it to password protect parts of your site.
5. You can also block various bots with the .htaccess file — for example, you can keep some spammers out, or prevent search engine spiders from indexing your images folder.

You can read the definitive information on .htaccess files at Apache.org.

5 Ways to Speed Up Your Site

Throughout the blogosphere I’m always seeing these blogs, that while they look great, are horribly slow and overburdened. Over the past few months I have become somewhat of a website optimization specialist, bringing my own site from an over 250kB homepage to its current 34kB. I will help you achieve some of the same success with a few, powerful tips. Most of these are common sense, but I can’t stress their importance enough. I will concentrate on the website and not the server in this article, as there are too many things to discuss when it comes to server optimization.