What is the .htaccess file?

The .htaccess file is short for Hypertext Access. It is a hypertext access file that gets its name from the directory configuration file on Apache servers and is used to collect the server's main directives.

The name starts with a "." due to Unix systems, where such files are identified as hidden. That is why we must pay attention when renaming it on Windows to avoid problems.

The file is created locally, saved in text format (.txt) — never Word format — and uploaded to the server via FTP, placing it in the folder where it needs to be used.

How does it work?

You must take into account the behaviors of this file and all its particularities:

• ›The behavior of this file is hierarchical across the website's directory tree, which means that if you have a file in the root directory of the site, the directives will affect all folders. There is therefore not a single htaccess file; there can be one per directory if necessary.
• ›Every time a user accesses a web page, the server scans these documents and the directives they contain. Therefore, it is essential that they are perfectly configured and contain no errors, to avoid incidents.
• ›Before making any changes, make sure you do so on a copy of the .htaccess document because if you edit it badly you may have problems afterwards.
• ›Comments in the file are always introduced with a hash "#".

How to optimize the htaccess file for SEO?

Through certain directives we can indicate what we want to ask the server to do, and thus optimize various areas. From the htaccess we can:

Redirect a subdomain to a subfolder

This will be very useful when we need to remove a subdomain and make it part of a domain's folder. For example: hola.example.com redirected to www.example.com/hola

301 and 302 redirects

In the file the old URLs are included along with the ones to which the redirect should go.

File redirection

Redirect /old-page.html https://www.new-page.html

Password protection

Certain areas of a website can be protected with a password:

Simple password protection via .htaccess

AuthType Basic AuthName "Protected area" AuthUserFile /<absolute path to password file>/.htpasswd AuthPGAuthoritative Off require user User1 User2 User3

Folder access control

Through directives you can manage access (deny or allow) to certain folders for all users or through a specific IP:

File for IP access regulation

Order deny,allow Deny from .aol.com Deny from 192.168 Allow from 192.168.220.102

Indicate the main domain

Using the 301 redirect rule to domain.com or www.domain.com

RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.

RewriteCond %{HTTPS}s ^on(s)|off

RewriteCond http%1://%{HTTP_HOST} ^(https?://)(www.)?(.+)$

RewriteRule ^ %1%3%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]

Redirects to the secure version

Redirects of the website to the secure protocol:

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

Change the default page

On some websites, the default page is named /index, which is not SEO-friendly. It can be changed so it doesn't show.

DirectoryIndex example-page.php

Increase the PHP memory limit

The use of PHP applications has a certain limit because scripts take up memory on the server. Using the following command you can increase the capacity:

PHP Memory Limit

php_value memory_limit 128M

Change the server's time zone

You can set the correct time zone with the following command:

#Set the default time zone SetEnv TZ America / Washington

Document encoding

You can specify the encoding type for each document type. For UTF-8 encoding you need to enter this command:

Specify character encoding

AddDefaultCharset utf-8

Force caching of your website

By changing the number of seconds in the caching frequency we make it easier, when the user visits us, for the page to load faster since most of the elements that haven't been modified are already cached. This mainly helps us improve image loading.

<IfModule mod_expires.c> ExpiresActive On ExpiresByType image/gif A432000 ExpiresByType image/jpg A432000 ExpiresByType image/jpeg A432000 ExpiresByType image/png A432000 ExpiresByType image/ico A432000 ExpiresByType image/bmp A432000 ExpiresByType text/css A432000 ExpiresByType text/javascript A432000 ExpiresByType application/javascript A432000 ExpiresByType application/x-javascript A432000 </ifmodule>

Customize 404 error pages

When this error occurs because the user reaches a page that is not found, the htaccess file can display these optimized 404 error pages. Often they are one of the most overlooked pages and can make the difference between retaining the user or making them leave.

Custom error message at local location

ErrorDocument 404 /access-path/404.html Security

Through this file you can block access to certain spam bots:

RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} buttons-for-website.com [NC,OR]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} darodar.com [NC,OR]

Hotlinking

You can also block unethical techniques such as hotlinking: This technique consists of displaying content hosted on your server but on a different website, so that even though the visitor is on another site, it is your server that bears the load of displaying that content, usually videos or photos.

Prevent hotlinking

RewriteEngine on RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$ RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://your-domain/.*$ [NC] [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.your-domain/.*$ [NC] [OR] RewriteRule .*.(gif|GIF|jpg|JPG|bmp|BMP|wav|mp3|wmv|avi|mpeg)$ - [F]

Create friendly URLs

It is possible to remove the default parameters from URLs and disguise them so they look friendlier and help rank better in search results. For example: https://www.example.com/index.php?parameter=blog looks better as https://www.example.com/blog

RewriteEngine On

RewriteRule ^shop/([^/])/([^/])/$ /index.php?category=$1&product=$2 [L]

Compress files to improve browsing

Through a rule in the htaccess you can compress your website's js, css, html and text files so that they take up less space during loading. This will make it easier for mobile users to consume less data while browsing. Let's remember the importance of WPO for SEO!

<ifmodule> AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/plain text/xml text/css text/javascript application/x-javascript </ifmodule>

Gzip compression

Compress your files on the server to achieve a faster download and improve the quality of browsing.

AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/plain text/xml application/xml application/xhtml+xml text/javascript text/css application/x-javascript BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4.0[678] no-gzip BrowserMatch bMSIE !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html

Prevent file indexing

We may find that, despite having blocked certain URLs or folders from the robots.txt file, Google still indexes them. By entering the following command we will achieve a complete block:

<Files ~ «.pdf$»>

Header set X-Robots-Tag «noindex, follow»

</Files>

Enable Keep-Alive

Enabling this allows a continuous connection to the server instead of starting a connection every time the page loads. With keep-alive we ensure fast downloads of the website.

<ifModule mod_headers.c> Header set Connection keep-alive </ifModule> Now that you have seen all the possibilities you have with the htaccess file, you are free to implement them. These rules are valid whether you have WordPress as a CMS, your own code, or any other system.

It is true that if you have a WordPress project, your life will be simpler, since you can edit the htaccess file directly in the editor. Even so, be very careful because this is not just another plugin and it is very easy to break the site! We'll tell you how to do it!

Editing the htaccess file in WordPress

If you use WordPress, we recommend installing the Rank Math plugin, which will allow you to edit it easily and quickly.

You just have to go to Rank Math > General Settings > Edit .htaccess

Editing the htaccess file from WordPress is very simple so remember to be careful!

Do you still have any questions? Leave us a comment and we'll be happy to take a look!

Sources consulted:

- CDmon: Information and uses of the .htaccess file - Computerhoy: What is .htaccess, what is it for and fundamental codes - Ionos: Ten tricks for configuring .htaccess that anyone should know - HelpOne: What is .htaccess? - Hostinger: What is the .htaccess file?