10+ .htaccess snippets to optimize your website

Apache .htaccess file is at the heart of your web server and control how your website will react to different actions performed by your visitors. I’ve compiled 10+ awesome .htaccess snippets to optimize your website in many ways: Redirections, performances, ease of use… Enjoy!

All of the snippets below have to be pasted into your .htaccess file, which is located on the root of your Apache server.
Waring: Always make sure you have a working backup before editing your .htaccess file!

Force trailing slash

Many clients of mine asked me for always having a trailing slash at the end of their urls. Looks like it’s great for SEO. The following snippet will alwyas add a trailing slash to your site urls.

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

Source: http://perishablepress.com/code-snippets/

Prevent hotlinking

Hotlinking (the act of using images from another site than yours) is unfortunely a common practice which can waste lots of your precious bandwidth. This useful snippets will redirect all hotlinked images to a specific image, defined on line 6.

RewriteEngine On
#Replace ?mysite\.com/ with your blog url
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(.+\.)?mysite\.com/ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
#Replace /images/nohotlink.jpg with your "don't hotlink" image url
RewriteRule .*\.(jpe?g|gif|bmp|png)$ /images/nohotlink.jpg [L]

Source: http://www.wprecipes.com/how-to-protect-your…

Redirect mobile devices

If your site is not using responsive web design yet, it could be very useful to be able to redirect mobile device to a mobile-specific version of your website.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/m/.*$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_ACCEPT} "text/vnd.wap.wml|application/vnd.wap.xhtml+xml" [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} "acs|alav|alca|amoi|audi|aste|avan|benq|bird|blac|blaz|brew|cell|cldc|cmd-" [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} "dang|doco|eric|hipt|inno|ipaq|java|jigs|kddi|keji|leno|lg-c|lg-d|lg-g|lge-" [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT}  "maui|maxo|midp|mits|mmef|mobi|mot-|moto|mwbp|nec-|newt|noki|opwv" [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} "palm|pana|pant|pdxg|phil|play|pluc|port|prox|qtek|qwap|sage|sams|sany" [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} "sch-|sec-|send|seri|sgh-|shar|sie-|siem|smal|smar|sony|sph-|symb|t-mo" [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} "teli|tim-|tosh|tsm-|upg1|upsi|vk-v|voda|w3cs|wap-|wapa|wapi" [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} "wapp|wapr|webc|winw|winw|xda|xda-" [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} "up.browser|up.link|windowssce|iemobile|mini|mmp" [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} "symbian|midp|wap|phone|pocket|mobile|pda|psp" [NC]
#------------- The line below excludes the iPad
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !^.*iPad.*$
#-------------
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !macintosh [NC] #*SEE NOTE BELOW
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /m/ [L,R=302]

Source: http://snipplr.com/view.php?codeview&id=55114

Force download of a specific filetype

For some reasons you may need to force download of specific files, such as MP3s or XLS. This code snippets will prevent your visitor’s browser to read the file and force downloading instead.

<Files *.xls>
  ForceType application/octet-stream
  Header set Content-Disposition attachment
</Files>
<Files *.eps>
  ForceType application/octet-stream
  Header set Content-Disposition attachment
</Files>

Source: http://snipplr.com/view.php?codeview&id=54752

Cross Domain Font embedding for Firefox

When embedding a font, Firefox do not allow you to embed from an external website. Using the .htaccesssnippet below, you can bypass this limitation.

<FilesMatch "\.(ttf|otf|eot|woff)$">
<IfModule mod_headers.c>
    Header set Access-Control-Allow-Origin "http://yourdomain.com"
</IfModule>
</FilesMatch>

Source: http://snipplr.com/view/53703

Speed up your site with .htaccess caching

This is probably the most useful snippet of this whole list. By using some simple .htaccess file cahing, you can dramatically increase your website speed. A snippet you should always have on your toolbox!

# 1 YEAR
<FilesMatch "\.(ico|pdf|flv)$">
Header set Cache-Control "max-age=29030400, public"
</FilesMatch>
# 1 WEEK
<FilesMatch "\.(jpg|jpeg|png|gif|swf)$">
Header set Cache-Control "max-age=604800, public"
</FilesMatch>
# 2 DAYS
<FilesMatch "\.(xml|txt|css|js)$">
Header set Cache-Control "max-age=172800, proxy-revalidate"
</FilesMatch>
# 1 MIN
<FilesMatch "\.(html|htm|php)$">
Header set Cache-Control "max-age=60, private, proxy-revalidate"
</FilesMatch>

Source: http://www.askapache.com/htaccess/speed-up-sites-with-htaccess-caching.html

Stop spam on your WordPress blog

Sick of spammers on your WordPress blog? Of course, Akismet helps a lot, but your .htaccess file can also help: Today’s recipe is a snippet that prevent spam bots to directly access your wp-comments-post.php file, which is used to post comments on your blog.

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} POST
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} .wp-comments-post\.php*
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !.*yourdomainname.* [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^$
RewriteRule (.*) ^http://%{REMOTE_ADDR}/$ [R=301,L]
</IfModule>

Source: http://www.wprecipes.com/reduce-spam-on-your-wordpress-blog-by-using-htaccess

Redirect different feeds to a single format

Years ago, differents feed formats, such as RSS, Atom or Rdf were used. Nowadays, it seems that RSS is definitely the most used. This snippets allows you to redirect all feeds formats to a single feed. This snippet can be used “as it” on WordPress blogs.

<IfModule mod_alias.c>
 RedirectMatch 301 /feed/(atom|rdf|rss|rss2)/?$ http://example.com/feed/
 RedirectMatch 301 /comments/feed/(atom|rdf|rss|rss2)/?$ http://example.com/comments/feed/
</IfModule>

Source: http://www.wprecipes.com/redirect-feeds-to-a-single-format

Configure your website for HTML5 videos

HTML5 is bringing lots of new exiting options in the world of web development. Among other cool features, being able to play videos without using Flash is really cool. Though, you have to configure your server properly to work with the latest HTML5 video standards. This snippet will definitely help.

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !=/favicon.ico
AddType video/ogg .ogv
AddType video/ogg .ogg
AddType video/mp4 .mp4
AddType video/webm .webm
AddType application/x-shockwave-flash swf

Source: http://snipplr.com/view.php?codeview&id=53437

Log PHP errors

Instead of displaying PHP errors to your site (and to possible hackers…) this code snippet will log it into a .logfile while hiding errors to visitors.

# display no errs to user
php_flag display_startup_errors off
php_flag display_errors off
php_flag html_errors off
# log to file
php_flag log_errors on
php_value error_log /location/to/php_error.log

Source: http://css-tricks.com/snippets/htaccess/php-error-logging/

Run PHP inside JavaScript files

When coding in JavaScript, it can very useful to be able to use PHP inside the .js files, for example for retrieving data from your database. Here is a snippet to allow the use of PHP inside .js files.

AddType application/x-httpd-php .js
AddHandler x-httpd-php5 .js

<FilesMatch "\.(js|php)$">
SetHandler application/x-httpd-php
</FilesMatch>

Source: http://www.kavoir.com/2010/07/how-to-execute-run-php-code-inside-javascript-files.html