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Some webhosts (and some Internet Providers) allow you to either use Frontpage Extensions or a so called .htaccess file. I have never used the Frontpage Extensions, since I really hate Frontpage as an editor for my webpages, instead I use Dreamweaver. So no Frontpage Extensions for me. Instead I use the so called .htaccess file. So what can we do with the .htaccess file? Well, we can create custom error pages, automatically redirect obsolete links, regulate access, etc. Note: Not all providers offer the use of the .htaccess file, please contact your provider and ask him if this is supported. Warning: Frontpage is not handling the .htaccess files well! Note: You can define an .htaccess file for each folder, over-ruling the root .htaccess file! Note: Some dedicated servers expect you to use absolute paths, so instead of /bla.htm you should use http://www.yoursite.com/bla.htm.

.htaccess file - Overview

This strangely named file is they key to getting the most out of your virtual server. Actually, the filename makes pretty good sense once you know that files that start with a dot, are hidden files in a Unix-like environment, and that 'ht' is derived from 'HTTP', and well access from access.

The .htaccess file is basically a text file with some instructions, stored somewhere on the server (preferably in the root of your website).

• Automatically redirecting users to another page
  - file to file redirection
  - directory to directory redirection
  - one filetype to another filetype redirection
• Preventing someone from viewing my .htaccess file
• Deny access to certain IP-addresses
• Define my default page
• Prevent someone from linking to my downloads
• Custom error pages
• Error List
• Avoid users browsing your directories

Deny access to certain IP-addresses

You can deny access to certain IPs. If you don't want someone to access your site place the following code into your .htaccess file:

<Limit GET>
order allow,deny
deny from 123.456.789.0
deny from 123.45.67
allow from all
</Limit>

This code will block 123.456.789.0 IP and all others that are starting with 128.45.67. Everybody else will be able to access your site. You can block as many addresses as you want.

Define my default webpage

Most servers have index.html as their default page. This means that when you access http://www.weethet.nl/, you will automatically be redirected to http://www.weethet.nl/index.html.

Let's say you want the default to be start.html. All you need to do is to add the following line to your .htaccess file:

DirectoryIndex start.html

Automatically redirecting users to another page

It may be necessary to redirect a user from one page to another.

Commonly this is needed when you have restuctured your website and gave some files a new location, or - like I did - had to rename all files because I started using ASP.

Without a redirect, the user will encounter a 404 File Not Found Error from you site. This is not very usefull to the visitor, you'd rather redirect him or her to the new location or new file that replaces the old one, so the visitor can see the info they are looking for.

File to File redirection

You could go for a little JavaScript (see Autoredirect in HTML) or rather simple by adding a line to your .htaccess file:

Redirect /oldpage.htm /newdirectory/newpage.php

You can add as many lines as necessary, just keep it in the same format. You can also redirect several pages to one main page. I used that for showing the error, informing the user to update their bookmakrs and to automatically redirect to the actual page. Click here to see a life example.

Directory to Directory redirection

Suppose you used to have a directory /dutch/content, but you moved the files to /blabla/textfiles. This means that each URL with "/dutch/content/" should be replaced with the same lnk with "/blabla/textfiles/" instead:

Redirect /dutch/content/ http://www.weethet.nl/blabla/textfiles/

Iedere link waarin dus staat http://www.weethet.nl/dutch/content/, wordt veranderd naar http//www.weethet.nl/blabla/textfiles/

Als voorbeeld;

je wilt de pagina http://www.weethet.nl/dutch/content/search.php openen.
De redirect maakt daar dan van http://www.weethet.nl/blabla/textfiles/search.php.

Filetype to filetype redirection

This one looks a bit more complicated. Say you want to redirect all ASP pages (*.ASP) to PHP pages (*.PHP).

RedirectMatch (.*)\.asp$ http://www.weethet.nl$1.php

Here each *.asp link will be redirected to the same link, now with the .php extension. Basically it says:

zero or more random characters (="(.*)\") ending with .asp (=".asp") at the end of the line (="$"), should be redirected to http://www.weethet.nl (="http://www.weethet.nl") with the same link as the found string minus the .asp extension (="$1") with a .php extension (=".php").

Preventing someone from viewing my .htaccess file

The .htaccess file typically resides in your root directory and can be viewed through the web browser. Most of the time there is information contained the the .htaccess file that you don't want people knowing, like the rules for allowing or denying access. One way to prevent access to the .htaccess file is to disable access to that particular filename. You can add the following lines to your .htaccess file in the root directory to deny visitors from viewing all .htaccess files contained in your website:

<Files .htaccess>
order allow,deny
deny from all
</Files>

Prevent someone from linking to my downloads

This may sound a bit sick and sad, but now-a-days, one get's billed for the bandwidth used, so if others do not wish to have these costs (or they are to lazy) they might link to the files on your site rather than linking to your website in general.

This text refers to an .htaccess file inside your download directory!

Add these lines to your .htaccess file and stop people from linking to your downloads and claiming it is theirs. You can also redirect them to another page of your choice.

AuthUserFile /dev/null
AuthGroupFile /dev/null
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !>http://www.example1.com [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !>http://example1.com [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !>http://www.example2.com [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !>http://www.example3.com [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !>http://123.123.123.123 [NC]
RewriteRule /* http://www.example.com/index.html [R,L]

"http://www.example1.com" (example2, etc.) is the URL where the downloads can occur.

The numbers 123.123.123.123 is your IP address for your site.

"http://www.domain.com/page.htm" is the page that an unauthorized person is redirected to. Be sure to keep the syntax in place and only change the URL's to your domain.

This will stop the download of any files in it's directory. You should create a separate directory for your downloads. If you place this file in the root directory you will be redirecting them to your RewriteRule page.

Custom error pages

I suspect we've all seen this before:

404 - File Not found The requested URL /someone/mistyped/a/link.html was not found on this server.

But we've probably all run into a page like the following too:

Oops! You've found a bad link! You will be redirected automatically to our main page.

These pages are examples of Error Documents. The top example is the standard error (404 - File Not Found), and the bottom example is an example of what you can replace it with. You can even have one for each directory if you want. Often these pages have a link back to the referering page or a link to the new location of an old page.

Most types of errors that the web server can run into have error numbers. For example "File Not Found" is error 404. (List of Errors below) The specification of an error document is easy. You add "ErrorDocument", the three digits of the error number and the either the error string or the page to go to. The following examples show the three forms:

ErrorDocument 404 http://www.domain.com/404.html
ErrorDocument 401 /401.html
ErrorDocument 500 errors.php?error=500.html

Error List

Client Error
Number	Description
400	Bad Syntax
401	Unauthorized
402	Not Used
403	Forbidden
404	File Not Found
Server Error
Number	Description
500	Internal Server Error
501	Not Implemented
502	Server Overloaded
503	Gateway Timeout

Avoid directory browsing

Som websites allow you (this is a defaut setting!) to browse directories on your webserver by simply entering URL+directory name in a webbrowser. Usually this is not something you would want. Copy the following line into the .htaccess file found in the root of the website, it will disable this browsing feature.

Options Includes FollowSymLinks