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!

Twitter, TinyURL, Dots, Dashes, and My htaccess File

2008-03-25T08:57:00.005Z

After a number of experiments and reading & participating in the twitter-development-talk mailing list, I can now tweet about updates to my pages without Twitter converting my URLs to TinyURLs. First, here's what I've learned about Twitter and TinyURLs:

If a URL path in a tweet contains only forward slashes (/), dots (.), and alphanumeric characters, Twitter does not convert the URL to a TinyURL.

I plan to start tweeting about pages when I update them and if a page's URL contains dashes, tweet it with the dashes replaced by dots. For example, the tweet about this blog item uses this URL:

http://deflexion.com/2008/03/twitter.tinyurl.dots.dashes.and.my

The .htaccess file on my server includes this line:

RedirectMatch 301 ^/(2008/../[^.]*)\.([^.]*)\.([^.]*)\.([^.]*)\.([^.]*)\.([^.]*)$ http://deflexion.com/$1-$2-$3-$4-$5-$6

which redirects the URL to this:

http://deflexion.com/2008/03/twitter-tinyurl-dots-dashes-and-my

which is the actual URL of the blog item. This way I maintain control of URLs that lead to my pages and TinyURL does not get to track and profile people who visit my pages via my tweets.

If you have a suggestion for a better way to do this, please post a comment. For example, I'm wondering if it would be better to use RewriteCond & RewriteRule rather than RedirectMatch in my .htaccess file. Some thoughts about this are in WhenNotToUseRewrite in the Apache Documentation Wiki.