A collection of useful .htaccess snippets, all in one place.
[!NOTE]
.htaccess files are for people that do not have rights to edit the main server configuration file. They are intrinsically slower and more complicated than using the main config. Please see the howto in the httpd documentation for further details.
[!WARNING]
While dropping the snippet into an .htaccess file is most of the time sufficient, there are cases when certain modifications might be required. Use at your own risk.
[!IMPORTANT]
These snippets are for Apache 2.4. If you are still using Apache 2.2, check the 2.2 branch. For details on the breaking changes between 2.2 and 2.4, see the upgrading document as well as this issue.
Rewrite and Redirection
Note: It is assumed that you have mod_rewrite installed and enabled.
Force www
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example\.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://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 still open for debate whether www or non-www is the way to go, so if you happen to be a fan of bare domains, here you go:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.example\.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://example.com/$1 [L,R=301]
Force non-www in a Generic Way
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.
RewriteCond %{HTTPS}s ^on(s)|off
RewriteCond http%1://%{HTTP_HOST} ^(https?://)(www\.)?(.+)$
RewriteRule ^ %1%3%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]
Force HTTPS
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !on
RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI}
# Note: It’s also recommended to enable HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS)
# on your HTTPS website to help prevent man-in-the-middle attacks.
# See https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Security/HTTP_strict_transport_security
<IfModule mod_headers.c>
# Remove "includeSubDomains" if you don't want to enforce HSTS on all subdomains
Header always set Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=31536000;includeSubDomains"
</IfModule>
Force HTTPS Behind a Proxy
Useful if you have a proxy in front of your server performing TLS termination.
RewriteCond %{HTTP:X-Forwarded-Proto} !https
RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI}
Force Trailing Slash
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} /+[^\.]+$
RewriteRule ^(.+[^/])$ %{REQUEST_URI}/ [R=301,L]
Remove Trailing Slash
This snippet will redirect paths ending in slashes to their non-slash-terminated counterparts (except for actual directories), e.g. https://www.example.com/blog/ to https://www.example.com/blog. This is important for SEO, since it’s recommended to have a canonical URL for every page.
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} (.+)/$
RewriteRule ^ %1 [R=301,L]
Source
Redirect a Single Page
Redirect 301 /oldpage.html https://www.example.com/newpage.html
Redirect 301 /oldpage2.html https://www.example.com/folder/
Source
Redirect Using RedirectMatch
RedirectMatch 301 /subdirectory(.*) https://www.newsite.com/newfolder/$1
RedirectMatch 301 ^/(.*).htm$ /$1.html
RedirectMatch 301 ^/200([0-9])/([^01])(.*)$ /$2$3
RedirectMatch 301 ^/category/(.*)$ /$1
RedirectMatch 301 ^/(.*)/htaccesselite-ultimate-htaccess-article.html(.*) /htaccess/htaccess.html
RedirectMatch 301 ^/(.*).html/1/(.*) /$1.html$2
RedirectMatch 301 ^/manual/(.*)$ https://www.php.net/manual/$1
RedirectMatch 301 ^/old-directory/(.*)$ /new-directory/$1
RedirectMatch 301 ^/z/(.*)$ https://static.askapache.com/$1
Source
Alias a Single Directory
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^source-directory/(.*) /target-directory/$1 [R=301,L]
Alias Paths to Script
FallbackResource /index.fcgi
This example has an index.fcgi file in some directory, and any requests within that directory that fail to resolve a filename/directory will be sent to the index.fcgi script. It’s good if you want baz.foo/some/cool/path to be handled by baz.foo/index.fcgi (which also supports requests to baz.foo) while maintaining baz.foo/css/style.css and the like. Get access to the original path from the PATH_INFO environment variable, as exposed to your scripting environment.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^$ index.fcgi/ [QSA,L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.fcgi/$1 [QSA,L]
This is a less efficient version of the FallbackResource directive (because using mod_rewrite is more complex than just handling the FallbackResource directive), but it’s also more flexible.
Redirect an Entire Site
Redirect 301 / https://newsite.com/
This way does it with links intact. That is www.oldsite.com/some/crazy/link.html will become www.newsite.com/some/crazy/link.html. This is extremely helpful when you are just “moving” a site to a new domain. Source
Alias “Clean” URLs
This snippet lets you use “clean” URLs -- those without a PHP extension, e.g. example.com/users instead of example.com/users.php.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^([^.]+)$ $1.php [NC,L]
Source
Exclude URL from Redirection
This snippet allows you to exclude a URL from redirection. For example, if you have redirection rules setup but want to exclude robots.txt so search engines can access that URL as expected.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^robots.txt - [L]
Security
Deny All Access
Require all denied
But wait, this will lock you out from your content as well! Thus introducing...
Deny All Access Except Yours
Require all denied
Require ip xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is your IP. If you replace the last three digits with 0/12 for example, this will specify a range of IPs within the same network, thus saving you the trouble to list all allowed IPs separately. Source
Now of course there's a reversed version:
Allow All Access Except Spammers'
Require all granted
Require not ip xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
Require not ip xxx.xxx.xxx.xxy
Deny Access to Hidden Files and Directories
Hidden files and directories (those whose names start with a dot .) should most, if not all, of the time be secured. For example: .htaccess, .htpasswd, .git, .hg...
RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME} -d [OR]
RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME} -f
RewriteRule "(^|/)\." - [F]
Alternatively, you can just raise a “Not Found” error, giving the attacker no clue:
RedirectMatch 404 /\..*$
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 if exposed to public.
<FilesMatch "(\.(bak|config|dist|fla|inc|ini|log|psd|sh|sql|swp)|~)$">
Require all denied
</FilesMatch>
Source
Disable Directory Browsing
Options All -Indexes
Disable Image Hotlinking
RewriteEngine on
# Remove the following line if you want to block blank referrer too
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^https?://(.+\.)?example.com [NC]
RewriteRule \.(jpe?g|png|gif|bmp|webp|avif|svg|ico)$ - [NC,F,L]
# If you want to display a “blocked” banner in place of the hotlinked image,
# replace the above rule with:
# RewriteRule \.(jpe?g|png|gif|bmp|webp|avif|svg|ico) https://example.com/blocked.png [R,L]
Disable Image Hotlinking for Specific Domains
Sometimes you want to disable image hotlinking from some bad guys only.
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?://(.+\.)?badsite\.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^https?://(.+\.)?badsite2\.com [NC,OR]
RewriteRule \.(jpe?g|png|gif|bmp|webp|avif|svg|ico)$ - [NC,F,L]
# If you want to display a “blocked” banner in place of the hotlinked image,
# replace the above rule with:
# RewriteRule \.(jpe?g|png|gif|bmp|webp|avif|svg|ico) https://example.com/blocked.png [R,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>
Block Visitors by Referrer
This denies access for all users who are coming from (referred by) a specific domain.
Source
RewriteEngine on
# Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} somedomain\.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} anotherdomain\.com
RewriteRule .* - [F]
Block Specific User Agents
This will block specific user agents from accessing your site, useful for blocking scrapers and bad bots.
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} BadBot [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} EvilScraper [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]
Prevent Framing the Site
This prevents the website to be framed (i.e. put into an iframe tag), when still allows framing for a specific URI.
SetEnvIf Request_URI "/starry-night" allow_framing=true
Header set X-Frame-Options SAMEORIGIN env=!allow_framing
Content Security Policy (CSP)
A Content Security Policy header helps mitigate cross-site scripting (XSS) and other code injection attacks by declaring which dynamic resources are allowed to load.
<IfModule mod_headers.c>
Header set Content-Security-Policy "default-src 'self'; script-src 'self'; style-src 'self'"
</IfModule>
Adjust the directives to fit your needs. See the CSP reference for all available directives.
Prevent MIME Type Sniffing
This prevents browsers from trying to guess ("sniff") the MIME type of a resource, which can have security implications. The browser will trust what the server says and block the resource if it doesn't match the expected type.
<IfModule mod_headers.c>
Header set X-Content-Type-Options "nosniff"
</IfModule>
Set Referrer Policy
Control how much referrer information is included with requests. This helps protect user privacy by preventing the full URL from leaking to external sites.
<IfModule mod_headers.c>
Header set Referrer-Policy "strict-origin-when-cross-origin"
</IfModule>
Set Permissions Policy
Restrict which browser features your site can use, such as camera, microphone, geolocation, etc.
<IfModule mod_headers.c>
Header set Permissions-Policy "camera=(), microphone=(), geolocation=(), interest-cohort=()"
</IfModule>
Remove Server Signature
Prevent Apache from exposing its version number and OS information in HTTP headers and error pages.
ServerSignature Off
Miscellaneous
Set PHP Variables
php_value <key> <val>
# For example:
php_value upload_max_filesize 50M
php_value max_execution_time 240
Custom Error Pages
ErrorDocument 500 "Houston, we have a problem."
ErrorDocument 401 https://error.example.com/mordor.html
ErrorDocument 404 /errors/halflife3.html
Custom Maintenance Page
Redirect all traffic to a maintenance page while still allowing access from a specific IP address.
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} !^xxx\.xxx\.xxx\.xxx
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/maintenance.html$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !\.(css|js|png|jpe?g|gif|svg|ico)$ [NC]
RewriteRule .* /maintenance.html [R=503,L]
Replace xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx with your IP address to retain access while the site is under maintenance.
Force Downloading
Sometimes you want to force the browser to download some content instead of displaying it.
<Files *.md>
ForceType application/octet-stream
Header set 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.
<FilesMatch "\.(tex|log|aux)$">
Header set Content-Type text/plain
</FilesMatch>
Allow Cross-Domain Fonts
CDN-served webfonts might not work in Firefox due to CORS. This snippet solves the problem.
<IfModule mod_headers.c>
<FilesMatch "\.(otf|ttc|ttf|woff|woff2)$">
Header set Access-Control-Allow-Origin "*"
</FilesMatch>
</IfModule>
Source
Enable CORS
Enable Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) for your site, allowing other domains to make requests to your server.
<IfModule mod_headers.c>
Header set Access-Control-Allow-Origin "*"
Header set Access-Control-Allow-Methods "GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, OPTIONS"
Header set Access-Control-Allow-Headers "Content-Type, Authorization"
</IfModule>
To restrict access to specific domains, replace * with the domain, e.g. https://example.com.
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/html
AddDefaultCharset utf-8
# Force UTF-8 for a number of file formats
AddCharset utf-8 .atom .css .js .json .rss .vtt .xml
Source
Set Custom MIME Types
Define custom MIME types for file formats that Apache may not recognize by default.
AddType application/manifest+json .webmanifest
AddType application/wasm .wasm
AddType application/x-ndjson .ndjson
AddType text/vtt .vtt
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. The following snippet should switch the PHP version for you.
AddHandler application/x-httpd-php84 .php
# Alternatively, you can use AddType
AddType application/x-httpd-php84 .php
Serve WebP/AVIF Images
If a modern format image (AVIF or WebP) with the same name exists alongside the original jpg/png, it will be served instead. AVIF is preferred over WebP when the browser supports both.
RewriteEngine On
# Serve AVIF if supported and available
RewriteCond %{HTTP_ACCEPT} image/avif
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/$1.avif -f
RewriteRule (.+)\.(jpe?g|png)$ $1.avif [T=image/avif,E=accept:1]
# Otherwise, serve WebP if supported and available
RewriteCond %{HTTP_ACCEPT} image/webp
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/$1.webp -f
RewriteRule (.+)\.(jpe?g|png)$ $1.webp [T=image/webp,E=accept:1]
