htaccess excerpts and notes

2008-03-26T12:34:00.010Z

Here are some excerpts from my .htaccess files. I'm posting these because I often need to remember the syntax of these commands and it's easier to look at the commands here on my blog than to ssh to my DreamHost or Verio web-hosting account and look at them there. Also, I hope these excerpts and notes will be useful to others.

Note: In the code below, a line that begins with a single hash (#) is code that is commented out and a line that begins with two hashes (##) is a comment about the code.

Used Everywhere

## Block viewing of .htaccess files
<Files .htaccess>
  order allow,deny
  deny from all
</Files>

## Do not let IP address xxx.xxx.xxx.xx access (GET) the site
## Uncomment these 5 lines if someone or something is abusing the site
## Note: 'GET' can be replaced by 'GET POST PUT'
# <Limit GET>
#   order allow,deny
#   allow from all
#   deny from xxx.xxx.xxx.xx
# </Limit>

## If a directory is requested, do not list the files in the directory
Options -Indexes

## Next is sometimes needed, but might already be set in the server configuration
# AddDefaultCharset UTF-8

## Next is needed if you use Rewrite rules
## (examples of RewriteCond and RewriteRule are in the sections below)
RewriteEngine On

## Next Rewrite option is often already set in the server configuration
## Uncomment if Rewrite rules don't work
# Options +FollowSymLinks

The next sections include examples that use the Apache mod_rewrite module. If they seem confusing, it's because they are! As Brian Behlendorf, one of the primary developers of the Apache web server, said:

“The great thing about mod_rewrite is it gives you all the configurability and flexibility of Sendmail. The downside to mod_rewrite is that it gives you all the configurability and flexibility of Sendmail.”

This quote, along with some other good quotes, is on the Apache Documentation mod_rewrite page.

Used at Deflexion.com

## Specify the MIME type of unknown file extensions
## This is needed because I use extensionless URLs at Deflexion.com
## If default is HTML, use:
# DefaultType text/html
## If default is PHP, use:
DefaultType application/x-httpd-php

## If URL points to a directory, serve the first of these files that exist
DirectoryIndex index index.php index.html index.atom

## PHP include files are located in this directory
php_value include_path "/path/i/do/not/want/to/publish/on/my/blog/_shared"

## If 'http://deflexion.com/index' is requested, remove 'index'
## The goal is to get people & machines to link to 1 & only 1 URL for this page
## Details at Wikipedia's URL normalization
## More examples of URL canonicalization are in the Infinite Ink section below
## Note: '^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /' matches GET POST PROPFIND etc, followed by space slash
## This RewriteCond avoids infinite loops
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index\ HTTP/
RewriteRule ^index$ http://deflexion.com/ [R=301,L]

## Redirect this local URL-path to the current URL
Redirect permanent /messaging/blogs/ http://deflexion.com/2004/01/just-what-is-blog-atomizing

## For details about these RedirectMatch lines, see
## Twitter, TinyURL, Dots, Dashes, and My htaccess File
## Note: The order of these 5 RedirectMatch lines matters!
RedirectMatch 301 ^/(2008/../[^.]*)\.([^.]*)\.([^.]*)\.([^.]*)\.([^.]*)\.([^.]*)$ http://deflexion.com/$1-$2-$3-$4-$5-$6
RedirectMatch 301 ^/(2008/../[^.]*)\.([^.]*)\.([^.]*)\.([^.]*)\.([^.]*)$ http://deflexion.com/$1-$2-$3-$4-$5
RedirectMatch 301 ^/(2008/../[^.]*)\.([^.]*)\.([^.]*)\.([^.]*)$ http://deflexion.com/$1-$2-$3-$4
RedirectMatch 301 ^/(2008/../[^.]*)\.([^.]*)\.([^.]*)$ http://deflexion.com/$1-$2-$3
RedirectMatch 301 ^/(2008/../[^.]*)\.([^.]*)$ http://deflexion.com/$1-$2
              ^^^
              '301' is equivalent to 'permanent'

Used at Infinite Ink

## If the requested hostname is anything other than www.ii.com,
## rewrite it to www.ii.com
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.ii.com$ 
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.ii.com/$1 [R=301,L]

## Remove trailing 'index.html' from requested URLs
## See Note above about the regular expression '^[A-Z](3,9}\ /'
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /([^/]+/)*index\.html\ HTTP/
RewriteRule ^(([^/]+/)*)index\.html$ http://www.ii.com/$1 [R=301,L]

## Redirect this local URL-path to the current URL
Redirect permanent /communicate http://deflexion.com/2005/12/make-meta-comment

Comments, suggestions, and questions are welcome!

Blogger, PHP, and Labels

2007-07-02T19:10:00.000Z

I'm in the process of updating my Blogger template so that my new Blogger labels and their corresponding label pages have a reasonable user interface and are actually useful. My goals are to:

Make it clear when a label page is being displayed by including the label name in the page title and in any relevant headers & sidebar sections.
On the page for a label named label, display my bookmarks that are tagged with label on del.icio.us (and, of course, also display my blog items that are labeled with label).

The first step is to use PHP to get the label name into a variable, which I call $label. Here's how I do this:

<MainPage>
<?php
  $label = strtoupper(basename($_SERVER['PHP_SELF']));
  if ($label == 'INDEX') {
    $label = NULL;
  }

  // Note: This assumes no label will be named index

?>
</MainPage>

This sets the $label variable to the upper-cased label name if a label page is being displayed and to NULL if the top page (deflexiοn.com/index) is being displayed. Determining the label name is as simple as determining the page's filename (basename) because Blogger names each label page label.extension and I've set up my blog to use extensionless URLs.

Once the variable $label is set, I use code such as the following to unconditionally process statements:

<?php
  echo "$label Deflexions (bookmarks)";
?>

Note that this does the right thing on label pages and on the the top page (index). For example, on a label page this resolves to:

LABEL Deflexions (bookmarks)

And on the top page, this resolves to:

Deflexions (bookmarks)

To conditionally process statements, I use code like the following:

<?php
  if ($label) {
    echo "↓ deflexions & reflexions labeled $label";
  }
?>

Note that on the top page $label is NULL, which is considered FALSE, and statements inside the squiggly brackets will not be run.

I'm still updating my template so things are kind of a mess at the moment. I'm posting this now because I'd love to get feedback on my PHP code and my template. Please post your thoughts and tips as a comment to this blog item - thank you!