What is htaccess file and use of it ?

[copcop1973]

Hello friends
Please give me the answer.

[Sanket Patel]

Hypertext Access short name of this file is .htaccess. It is very important file for the site owner because you can redirect your site pages, change the extensions of pages, protect passwords and much more. .htaccess file gives you control on redirection of your pages. This should be done using FTP server program. You can solve page duplication problems by help of this. It has a number of benefits.

[rasikpatel]

Originally Posted by Sanket Patel

Hypertext Access short name of this file is .htaccess. It is very important file for the site owner because you can redirect your site pages, change the extensions of pages, protect passwords and much more. .htaccess file gives you control on redirection of your pages. This should be done using FTP server program. You can solve page duplication problems by help of this. It has a number of benefits.

I agree with you Sanket. Till now I am only aware of redirection use of .htacces file. But from your post i came to know that it can be used to protect password also. Thanks for the information.

[BrightLinkDesign]

I use it mostly to ban spammers and alot of bad bots
very useful file to protect your site

[milina788]

HTaccess stands for Hypertext access and it is a kind of admin tool which allows site owner to manage their web pages as redirection of pages, security of passwords, change in any extension page and many more but the most important task which can be done through this ht access is the security of the password and redirection of web pages.

[jeja7676]

.htaccess file is usually used for redirections.
You redirect www version of your page to non-www version in order to avoid duplicated pages (which is not good thing for Google)
You can also make permanent redirections, if page was deleted and other SEO-friendly stuff.
For example, you can prevent hot linking from .htaccess

[SlavD]

first of all .htaccess is a directory level configuration file (meaning you can have many of those in different directories)

second - it overrides server's global configuration

third - it can only be accessed directly - never via http

Things you can do with .htaccess:

- restrict access to a directory (allow only users with passwords in .htpasswd file)
- instruct how to handle different mime types
- control caching
- control directory listing
- block IP's, domains, referrers
- and even URL rewriting!

see this site for great .htaccess tips corz(dot)org/serv/tricks/htaccess.php

I should also add that overuse of .htaccess can be very messy, makes website hard to control and has performance implications (just so you don't get over excited and start putting .htaccess with url rewrites in every single dir