Htaccess: Learn everything about this file

Have you ever hosted a website or researched how this service works? If so, you’ve probably seen or heard about htaccess files. These files behave differently from the .html or .txt extensions, which are widely used in these services. The “.htaccess” is a text string in code where you can be giving orders directly to your server. Therefore, it is through it that you can perform several optimizations of your website.

So, in this article we will understand the following topics:

• What does the .htaccess file do?
• What can you do with the .htaccess file?
• When to use the .htaccess file?
• How should I use this file?
• Its importance for SEO

What does the .htaccess file do?

Its name comes from “HyperText access”. It works at the directory level, so you can allow one or more administrators to execute orders. With these orders, you can configure a website, through the Apache server system. For example:

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
rewritecond %{http_host} exemple.com [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.exemple.com/$1 [r=301,nc]

Using the example above, you can configure access to your website without using “www.”. This is useful because it facilitates the work of the user and the searcher, improving SEO, just because they find your address with the URL “example.com”.

You can use .htaccess within the root directory, that is, throughout your site. This means that you can include a general function in “www.example.com”. However, you can also include a function only in a directory or content, that is, a tab, such as “www.exemple.com/tab1”.

What can you do with the .htaccess file?

The .htaccess file is made of plain text, however, with it, you can execute several orders and solve thousands of problems within your website. With the right commands you can:

• Customize error pages on your website;
• Password protect your website;
• Deny access to the site by IP;
• Change the default directory page;
• Include website page under maintenance;
• Redirect users to other pages;
• Redirect visits to a secure HTTPS server;
• Shorten URLs;
• Create friendly URLs;
• Improve SEO, among many other functions.

When to use the .htaccess file?

You must use this file to optimize your website. However, only when the server gives you access to this feature.

In some cases, you may have access to the server’s configuration file through a system or platform, and you can give commands to your website there.

How should I use this file?

You should always place the .htaccess file in the root folder of the hosting server. You can usually identify this folder as public_html on the hosting server.

Also, the name of this file must always have the dot at the beginning, for it to take effect, that is, it must be named as “.htaccess”. This extension can be opened in any text editor, so if you are a developer, you can use your preferred editor to edit it.

Therefore, you can create this file using the file manager of your control panel, or you can upload it via FTP. The “.htaccess” works on any web server, such as Apache, NGINX, IIS, etc.

Its importance for SEO

If you still don’t know what SEO is, we recommend reading on.

But in a nutshell, SEO is the optimization of your website to improve search engine results. That is, it is used for you to improve accesses through organic results in search engines.

Nowadays, if your website is not optimized, it is not easily found, and you lose a lot of traffic.

There are several ways to improve a website’s SEO. Among them, Htaccess can help a lot.

With .htaccess you improve SEO, as it allows you to give orders to the site and improve its performance on the internet.