.htaccess Tutorial

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by Jeremy Luebke

Many people know about the .htaccess script that can be uploaded to Apache server but few know of it's full potential. The most common use is for redirecting the default 404 error page to a custom version but this versatile script is capable of so much more. In this tutorial we will be covering how to use the .htaccess script to:

Create Custom Error Pages

We'll start with the most common use for this file. This is pretty simple. The first step you want to take is to create and upload the custom error pages to your server. The most common error pages are 404, 401, and 500 but you can create a page for every error under the sun.

After you have uploaded those html pages we need to make the .htacces file. Open up note pad (or it's equivalent). The contents of the file should look like this:

ErrorDocument 404 http://www.domain.com/404.html
ErrorDocument 500 http://www.domain.com/500.html
ErrorDocument 500 http://www.domain.com/401.html

Replace the urls with the ones you just uploaded then save it as .htaccess. If windows won't let you name it .htaccess due to there being no name in front of the period just name it htaccess and then when you go to upload it through ftp use that program to rename it to the proper .htaccess. When you do upload the file just make sure to use ASCII mode and to put it in the public_ html directory. Once you've done this, any errors will redirect people to your custom pages.

Enable .htm, .html pages to be able to handle SSI

Most hosts will tell you that in order to be able to use SSI on a webpage you will have to use .shtm, and .shtml extensions. With this file it is possible to use the .htm, and .html extensions for the same purpose.

You are basically going to follow the same steps that we used to create custom error pages. Open up a text editor and insert the following:

AddType text/html .shtml .shtm .htm .html
AddHandler server-parsed .shtml .shtm .htm .html

Then save as .htaccess and upload in ASCII mode to your public_html directory.

Protect your bandwidth and content.

There are certain individuals out there that like to steal content and bandwidth from other sites. If you have a large amount of downloads on your site omeone might decide to link to them and pass it off as their content. Adding this little file to your site will stop them cold in their tracks. On top of that it will redirect the surfer who clicks on their download link to whatever html page you wish.

Follow the same steps in the last two examples and put this text in the file:

AuthUserFile /dev/null
AuthGroupFile /dev/null

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !>http://www.coolresources.com [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !>http://coolresources.com [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !>http://www.webmaster.coolresources.com [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !>http://webmaster.coolresources.com.com [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !>http://208.56.6.68 [NC]

RewriteRule /* http://www.iboost.com/index.html [R,L]

"RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !>http://www.coolresources.com [NC]" is the url or url's that the downloads will be allowed from.

"RewriteRule /* http://www.iboost.com/index.html [R,L]" is the page that the surfer will be redirected to if they do try to download from an unauthorized url.

This file needs to be uploaded in ASCII mode to the directory that contains the downloads that you wish to protect.