The .htaccess file is a versatile tool that lets you customize directory-specific settings for homepages hosted on Apache servers. In this article, we’ll delve into .htaccess rewrite rules and share some examples.
Enable directory indexes
Options +Indexes
Blocking certain IP-addresses
<RequireAll>
Require all granted
Require not ip 1.2.3.4
Require not ip 12.34.56.78
</RequireAll>
Allowing queries from one certain IP-address
Require ip 1.2.3.4
Blocking a certain USER_AGENT (for example a bad Bot)
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} BadBot
RewriteRule .* - [F]
Blocking several USER_AGENTs
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} BadBot [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} EvilScanner [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Fake
RewriteRule .* - [F]
Deny access to a certain file
<Files "denied.php">
Order Allow,Deny
Deny from all
</Files>
Basic redirection
# Redirecting the main domain Redirect 301 / https://www.example.fi/ # Redirecting an expired link Redirect 301 /expired-page https://www.example.fi/new-page
Redirecting all queries to one domain
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^(?:www\.)?example.fi$ [NC]
RewriteRule .* https://www.example.com%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]
Redirecting a domain without www to a domain with www
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example\.fi$ [NC]
RewriteRule (.*) https://www.example.fi/$1 [NC,R=301,L]
or:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\. [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [NC,R=301,L]
Redirecting a domain with www to a domain without www
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.example\.fi$ [NC]
RewriteRule (.*) https://example.fi/$1 [NC,R=301,L]
or:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.(.*)$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://%1%{REQUEST_URI} [NC,R=301,L]
Allowing certain resources (fonts, svg, css and js files) from a domain other than the server’s domain (Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS))
<IfModule mod_headers.c>
<FilesMatch "\.(ttf|ttc|otf|eot|woff|woff2|svg|font.css|css|js)$">
Header set Access-Control-Allow-Origin "https://www.example.fi"
</FilesMatch>
</IfModule>
HSTS, Content Security Policy and other security-related headers
<IfModule mod_headers.c>
Header set Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=31536000;includeSubDomains;preload" env=HTTPS
Header set X-Frame-Options "DENY"
Header set Content-Security-Policy "default-src https:; script-src https: 'unsafe-inline'; style-src https:'unsafe-inline'"
Header set X-XSS-Protection "1; mode=block"
Header set X-Content-Type-Options nosniff
</IfModule>
Allowing queries only from Finnish IP-addresses
order deny,allow deny from all allow from env=DZSP_IS_Finnish_IP
Allowing access only from countries of the European Union
SetEnvIf MM_COUNTRY_CODE ^(AT|BE|BG|CZ|CY|DE|DK|EE|EL|ES|FI|FR|HR|HU|IE|IT|LT|LU|LV|MT|NL|PL|PT|RO|SE|SI|SK) EUROPEANUNION order deny,allow deny from all allow from env=EUROPEANUNION
Blocking a certain country, e.g. China (CN).
SetEnvIf MM_COUNTRY_CODE ^(CN) BlockedCountry Deny from env=BlockedCountry
Redirecting users from a certain country (Finland) to another domain
SetEnvIf MM_COUNTRY_CODE ^(FI) FINLAND
RewriteCond %{ENV:FINLAND} ^1$
RewriteRule .* http://www.example.fi%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]
Our servers use the GeoLite2 database which is created by MaxMind and which can be downloaded at www.maxmind.com.
Maintenance mode – temporarily redirect all queries to the maintenance notification page
# If necessary, add certain URLs that must go through first before RewriteRule
# Add your network's IP-address
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/maintenance.html [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/maintenance\.css [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/maintenance\.jpg [NC]
RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} !90\.100\.100\.100
RewriteRule .* https://example.fi/maintenance.html [L]
Disabling the execution of PHP in order to prevent security issues
Options -ExecCGI
RemoveType .php .php3 .phtml .inc
RemoveHandler .php .php3 .phtml .inc
<FilesMatch "\.(?i:php|php3|phtml|inc)$">
Require all denied
</FilesMatch>
<IfModule mod_php7.c>
php_flag engine off
</IfModule>
Using a rewrite proxy
For example, displaying the contents of the subdirectory example.com/proxy/ on the main domain example.com
RewriteRule "^proxy/(.*)$" "http://www.example.com/$1" [P,L]
NB! Proxy requests can only be made for HTTP connections and a notification about each query will be added to the web server error log.
In addition, for examples of .htaccess rewrite rules, read also “301 redirect with .htaccess file“.