.htaccess Snippets

A collection of useful .htaccess snippets, all in one place. I decided to create this repo after getting so tired (and bored) with Googling everytime there's a need of forcing www for my new website.

Disclaimer: While dropping the snippet into an .htaccess file is most of the time sufficient, there are cases when certain modifications might be required. Use with your own risks.

IMPORTANT: Apache 2.4 introduces a few breaking changes, most notably in access control configuration. For more information, check the upgrading document as well as this issue.

Credits

What I'm doing here is mostly collecting useful snippets from all over the interwebs (for example, a good chunk is from Apache Server Configs) into one place. While I've been trying to credit where due, things might be missing. If you believe anything here is your work and credits should be given, let me know, or just send a PR.

Table of Contents

• Rewrite and Redirection
  • Force www
  • Force www in a Generic Way
  • Force non-www
  • Force HTTPS
  • Force HTTPS Behind a Proxy
  • Force Trailing Slash
  • Redirect a Single Page
  • Alias a Single Directory
  • Alias Paths to Script
  • Redirect an Entire Site
  • Alias Clean URLs
• Security
  • Deny All Access
  • Deny All Access Except Yours
  • Allow All Access Except Spammers'
  • Deny Access to Hidden Files and Directories
  • Deny Access to Backup and Source Files
  • Disable Directory Browsing
  • Disable Image Hotlinking
  • Password Protect a Directory
  • Password Protect a File or Several Files
• Performance
  • Compress Text Files
  • Set Expires Headers
  • Turn eTags Off
• Miscellaneous
  • Set PHP Variables
  • Custom Error Pages
  • Force Downloading
  • Prevent Downloading
  • Allow Cross-Domain Fonts
  • Auto UTF-8 Encode
  • Switch to Another PHP Version

Rewrite and Redirection

Note: It is assumed that you have mod_rewrite installed and enabled.

Force www

RewriteEngineonRewriteCond%{HTTP_HOST}^example\.com [NC]
RewriteRule^(.*)$http://www.example.com/$1 [L,R=301,NC]

Force www in a Generic Way

RewriteCond%{HTTP_HOST}!^$RewriteCond%{HTTP_HOST}!^www\. [NC]
RewriteCond%{HTTPS}s^on(s)|RewriteRule^http%1://www.%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]

This works for any domain. Source

Force non-www

It's stillopenfordebate whether www or non-www is the master race, so if you happen to be a fan or bare domains, here you go:

RewriteEngineonRewriteCond%{HTTP_HOST}^www\.example\.com [NC]
RewriteRule^(.*)$http://example.com/$1 [L,R=301]

Force HTTPS

RewriteEngineonRewriteCond%{HTTPS}!onRewriteRule(.*)https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI}

Force HTTPS Behind a Proxy

Useful if you have a proxy in front of your server performing TLS termination.

RewriteCond%{HTTP:X-Forwarded-Proto}!httpsRewriteRule(.*)https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI}

Force Trailing Slash

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

Redirect a Single Page

Redirect301/oldpage.htmlhttp://www.yoursite.com/newpage.htmlRedirect301/oldpage2.htmlhttp://www.yoursite.com/folder/

Source

Alias a Single Directory

RewriteEngineOnRewriteRule^source-directory/(.*)target-directory/$1

Alias Paths To Script

RewriteEngineOnRewriteRule^$index.fcgi/ [QSA,L]
RewriteCond%{REQUEST_FILENAME}!-fRewriteCond%{REQUEST_FILENAME}!-dRewriteRule^(.*)$index.fcgi/$1 [QSA,L]

This example has an index.fcgi file in some directory, and any requests within that directory that fail to resolve a filename/directory will be sent to the index.fcgi script. It's good if you want baz.foo/some/cool/path to be handled by baz.foo/index.fcgi (which also supports requests to baz.foo) while maintaining baz.foo/css/style.css and the like.

Redirect an Entire Site

Redirect301/http://newsite.com/

This way does it with links intact. That is www.oldsite.com/some/crazy/link.html will become www.newsite.com/some/crazy/link.html. This is extremely helpful when you are just "moving" a site to a new domain. Source

Alias "Clean" URLs

This snippet lets you use "clean URLs" -- those without a PHP extension, e.g. example.com/users instead of example.com/users.php.

RewriteEngineOnRewriteCond%{SCRIPT_FILENAME}!-dRewriteRule^([^.]+)$$1.php [NC,L]

Source

Security

Deny All Access

## Apache 2.2Denyfrom all
## Apache 2.4# Require all denied

But wait, this will lock you out from your content as well! Thus introducing...

Deny All Access Except Yours

## Apache 2.2Order deny,allow
Denyfrom all
Allowfrom xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
## Apache 2.4# Require all denied# Require ip xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is your IP. If you replace the last three digits with 0/12 for example, this will specify a range of IPs within the same network, thus saving you the trouble to list all allowed IPs separately. Source

Now of course there's a reversed version:

Allow All Access Except Spammers'

## Apache 2.2Order deny,allow
Allowfrom all
Denyfrom xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
Denyfrom xxx.xxx.xxx.xxy
## Apache 2.4# Require all granted# Require not ip xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx# Require not ip xxx.xxx.xxx.xxy

Deny Access to Hidden Files and Directories

Hidden files and directories (those whose names start with a dot .) should most, if not all, of the time be secured. For example: .htaccess, .htpasswd, .git, .hg...

RewriteCond%{SCRIPT_FILENAME}-d [OR]
RewriteCond%{SCRIPT_FILENAME}-fRewriteRule"(^|/)\."- [F]

Alternatively, you can just raise a Not Found error, giving the attacker dude no clue:

RedirectMatch404/\..*$

Deny Access to Backup and Source Files

These files may be left by some text/html editors (like Vi/Vim) and pose a great security danger, when anyone can access them.

<FilesMatch"(\.(bak|config|dist|fla|inc|ini|log|psd|sh|sql|swp)|~)$">
## Apache 2.2Order allow,deny
Denyfrom all
Satisfy All
## Apache 2.4# Require all denied
</FilesMatch>

Source

Disable Directory Browsing

Options All -Indexes

Disable Image Hotlinking

RewriteEngineonRewriteCond%{HTTP_REFERER}!^$RewriteCond%{HTTP_REFERER}!^http(s)?://(www\.)?yourdomain.com [NC]
RewriteRule\.(jpg|jpeg|png|gif)$- [NC,F,L]

Password Protect a Directory

First you need to create a .htpasswd file somewhere in the system:

htpasswd -c /home/fellowship/.htpasswd boromir

Then you can use it for authentication:

AuthType Basic
AuthName "One does not simply"
AuthUserFile /home/fellowship/.htpasswd
Require valid-user

Password Protect a File or Several Files

AuthName "One still does not simply"
AuthType Basic
AuthUserFile /home/fellowship/.htpasswd
<Files"one-ring.o">
Require valid-user
</Files>
<FilesMatch^((one|two|three)-rings?\.o)$>
Require valid-user
</FilesMatch>

Performance

Compress Text Files

<IfModulemod_deflate.c>
# Force compression for mangled headers.# http://developer.yahoo.com/blogs/ydn/posts/2010/12/pushing-beyond-gzipping
<IfModulemod_setenvif.c>
<IfModulemod_headers.c>
SetEnvIfNoCase ^(Accept-EncodXng|X-cept-Encoding|X{15}|~{15}|-{15})$ ^((gzip|deflate)\s*,?\s*)+|[X~-]{4,13}$ HAVE_Accept-Encoding
RequestHeader append Accept-Encoding "gzip,deflate" env=HAVE_Accept-Encoding
</IfModule>
</IfModule>
# Compress all output labeled with one of the following MIME-types# (for Apache versions below 2.3.7, you don't need to enable `mod_filter`# and can remove the `<IfModule mod_filter.c>` and `</IfModule>` lines# as `AddOutputFilterByType` is still in the core directives).
<IfModulemod_filter.c>
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/atom+xml \
application/javascript \
application/json \
application/rss+xml \
application/vnd.ms-fontobject \
application/x-font-ttf \
application/x-web-app-manifest+json \
application/xhtml+xml \
application/xml \
font/opentype \
image/svg+xml \
image/x-icon \
text/css \
text/html \
text/plain \
text/x-component \
text/xml
</IfModule>
</IfModule>

Source

Set Expires Headers

Expires headers tell the browser whether they should request a specific file from the server or just grab it from the cache. It is advisable to set static content's expires headers to something far in the future. If you don't control versioning with filename-based cache busting, consider lowering the cache time for resources like CSS and JS to something like 1 week. Source

<IfModulemod_expires.c>
ExpiresActiveonExpiresDefault "access plus 1 month"
# CSSExpiresByTypetext/css "access plus 1 year"
# Data interchangeExpiresByTypeapplication/json "access plus 0 seconds"
ExpiresByTypeapplication/xml "access plus 0 seconds"
ExpiresByTypetext/xml "access plus 0 seconds"
# Favicon (cannot be renamed!)ExpiresByTypeimage/x-icon "access plus 1 week"
# HTML components (HTCs)ExpiresByTypetext/x-component "access plus 1 month"
# HTMLExpiresByTypetext/html "access plus 0 seconds"
# JavaScriptExpiresByTypeapplication/javascript "access plus 1 year"
# Manifest filesExpiresByTypeapplication/x-web-app-manifest+json "access plus 0 seconds"
ExpiresByTypetext/cache-manifest "access plus 0 seconds"
# MediaExpiresByTypeaudio/ogg "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByTypeimage/gif "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByTypeimage/jpeg "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByTypeimage/png "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByTypevideo/mp4 "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByTypevideo/ogg "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByTypevideo/webm "access plus 1 month"
# Web feedsExpiresByTypeapplication/atom+xml "access plus 1 hour"
ExpiresByTypeapplication/rss+xml "access plus 1 hour"
# Web fontsExpiresByTypeapplication/font-woff "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByTypeapplication/vnd.ms-fontobject "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByTypeapplication/x-font-ttf "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType font/opentype "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByTypeimage/svg+xml "access plus 1 month"
</IfModule>

Turn eTags Off

By removing the ETag header, you disable caches and browsers from being able to validate files, so they are forced to rely on your Cache-Control and Expires header. Source

<IfModulemod_headers.c>
Headerunset ETag
</IfModule>
FileETag None

Miscellaneous

Set PHP Variables

php_value<key><val># For example:php_valueupload_max_filesize50Mphp_valuemax_execution_time240

Custom Error Pages

ErrorDocument500 "Houston, we have a problem."
ErrorDocument401 http://error.yourdomain.com/mordor.html
ErrorDocument404 /errors/halflife3.html

Force Downloading

Sometimes you want to force the browser to download some content instead of displaying it. The following snippet will help.

<Files*.md>
ForceTypeapplication/octet-streamHeaderset Content-Disposition attachment
</Files>

Now there is a yang to this yin:

Prevent Downloading

Sometimes you want to force the browser to display some content instead of downloading it. The following snippet will help.

<FilesMatch"\.(tex|log|aux)$">
Headerset Content-Type text/plain
</FilesMatch>

Allow Cross-Domain Fonts

CDN-served webfonts might not work in Firefox or IE due to CORS. The following snippet from alrra should make it happen.

<IfModulemod_headers.c>
<FilesMatch"\.(eot|otf|ttc|ttf|woff)$">
Headerset Access-Control-Allow-Origin "*"
</FilesMatch>
</IfModule>

Auto UTF-8 Encode

Your text content should always be UTF-8 encoded, no?

# Use UTF-8 encoding for anything served text/plain or text/htmlAddDefaultCharset utf-8# Force UTF-8 for a number of file formatsAddCharset utf-8 .atom .css .js .json .rss .vtt .xml

Source

Switch to Another PHP Version

If you're on a shared host, chances are there are more than one version of PHP installed, and sometimes you want a specific version for your website. For example, Laravel requires PHP >= 5.4. The following snippet should switch the PHP version for you.

AddHandlerapplication/x-httpd-php55 .php
# Alternatively, you can use AddTypeAddTypeapplication/x-httpd-php55 .php