What is .htaccess file? what is it used for?

What is .htaccess?

.htaccess (Hypertext Access) is a useful file that many web servers apply settings on a directory basis, allowing the Apache server's default configuration to be overridden at runtime. Using .htaccess we can easily enable or disable any feature at runtime.

.htaccess is a complete file name, not just the file extension.

Be careful when using .htaccess configuration, any small mistake may block the entire website. Most likely we will encounter an error with status code 500 in the .htaccess file.

.htaccess purpose?

We can use .htaccess to complete various tasks at runtime. Some of the most common uses of .htaccess are listed below.

1. Redirect or rewrite URL

Using .htaccess, we can easily redirect users from one URL to another. Additionally, we can point URLs to other URLs without changing them in the browser window.

2. Enable password protection

Using .htaccess, we can enable basic HTTP authentication on the entire site or specific directory access. It prevents unauthorized access to data.

3. Define custom error pages

When our website encounters any error in the backend, the web server will display a predefined error page for each error . We can redesign our own error pages and display them to end users when an error occurs on the website.

4. Allow or Deny User

We can simply restrict any user from accessing the entire website based on that IP address. Our secure page can simply be allowed to be accessed only from specific ips. In this case, any user will get an error page if they try to access the secure page from an unauthorized page.

5. Change the URL

.htaccess is widely used to change the URL of the website to make it simple and easy to use. We can easily convert the URL displayed in the web browser.

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