Bright Cherry » htaccess fun

htaccess- 301 Redirect Old URLs With Spaces

adm1n — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 00:50:19 +0000

Here’s a quick and easy htaccess 301 redirect tip.

So, you have a URL like this:
http://www.example.co.uk/this is_a_file.html

and you want to redirect it to:

http://www.example.co.uk/this_is_a_file.html

All you need to is quote the URL like this:

1	Redirect 301 "/this is_a_file.html" http://www.example.co.uk/this_is_a_file.html

htaccess- Hide File Extension

adm1n — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 13:04:06 +0000

I only used this code for the first time last week, but seems to work pretty well. The same code is plastered all over the internet on various websites, so I’m only jotting it down for my own personal reference.

Hiding File Extensions

What this piece of htaccess code basically does is allow you to access files without needing to reference the file extension. For example, you call the following page http://www.example.com/contact.php by simply using http://www.example.com/contact (.php not require)

I think it’s pretty cool. It even allows you to pass variables through the URL without needing the file extension. For example, you can do the following, http://www.example.com/contact?id=23

The code

Simply copy/paste the following into your htaccess file

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}\.php -f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /$1.php

The example is specifically removing “php” file extensions- you can change that to whichever you want, I assume. I’ve only used it with php files so far

That’s it.

Htaccess- 301 Redirect An Entire Directory / Folder

adm1n — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 23:07:00 +0000

Here’s a simple pierce of code which will permanently redirect a folder / directory. For example, if you have a directory in the following path: http://www.example.com/pictures/, and for whatever reason decide to rename the directory to http://www.example.com/new-pictures/, the following htaccess code will safely redirect all users from /pictures/ to /new-pictures/

Redirect An Entire Directory / Folder with Htaccess

1
2
3

RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^old_dir/(.*) http://www.example.com/new_dir/ [R=301,L]

The nice thing about this code is that regardless of how deep you go into old_dir, it will always redirect. So literally the entire directory is redirected.

Htaccess: Prevent People Hotlinking Your Images

adm1n — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 23:49:10 +0000

Here’s some Htaccess code that will prevent people from hotlinking images hosted on your server. Simply change the domain to yours and then apply the code to your .htaccess. It’s as easy as that.

1
2
3

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$  
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http(s)?://(.*\.)?brightcherry.co.uk [NC]  
RewriteRule \.(jpeg|jpg|gif|png)$ - [F]

The code is basically saying that all jpg, gif and png files hosted on brightcherry.co.uk can only be displayed on brightcherry.co.uk. Anyone else that tries to hotlink it will see a X.

Why would you want to prevent people from hotlinking?

There are many reasons, but the main two I can think of are:

Prevents copyright infringement
Reduces data transfer. If someone hotlinks one of your images onto a website that receives heavy traffic, it will be your server that’s sending the data. That could specifically be costly for Admins that don’t have unlimited data transfer allowance.