.htaccess Tutorials

  • Adaptive Images

    The landscape of web continues to change as we get more and more devices that we need to support. One concern when creating websites that should accommodate all screen sizes is image size. The acceptable size for an image is not the same across devices, so we usually end up compromising image size and quality on all devices; not the optimal solution, of course. Enter a solution called Adaptive Images, a PHP / .htaccess based solution for detecting screen size and delivering optimally sized images for the user's device.

  • Android Detection with JavaScript or PHP

    I've noticed that two of my blog posts continue to get more popular each week:  iPad Detection with JavaScript or PHP and iPhone and iPad detection with JavaScript or PHP. What's obvious is that Android development is a hot topic that will only grow.  Here are a few methods by which you can detect iOS' main competitor:  Android.

  • Search Engine Friendly URLs with .htaccess and mod_rewrite

    I was recently developing a PHP website that used mod_rewrite to make its URLs search engine friendly. Websites have been using mod_rewrite and .htaccess strategies to do this for years now and there are a 100 ways to accomplish the task. One issue that was occurring with this site was URLs without the a trailing slash would work, but URLs with a trailing slash would break (trigger a 404 error):

  • Fixing mod_rewrite and .htaccess on GoDaddy Hosting

    I recently launched a new website on GoDaddy shared hosting. The website required mod_rewrite for SEO-friendly URLs. GoDaddy provides mod_rewrite but every time I tried to hit a two-deep URL, I would get a 404 error. Here's what I had:

  • Adding the XPI MIME Type for Firefox Extension Installs

    Yesterday I posted version 0.1 of the David Walsh Blog Toolbar for Firefox. Unfortunately that led to an awkward conversation with my .htaccess file.

  • Improve Your YSlow Grade Using .htaccess

    This post was authored by Eric Wendelin. To learn more about Eric, click here.

  • Quickly Set Up a Templating System Using .htaccess

    Setting up a website capable of easy template switching probably sounds difficult. When I first thought about building a templating system, it felt like a pretty daunting task. After tinkering around for a few days, I found a way that would allow me to switch templates by simply changing a .htaccess directive.

  • Check For Module Presence in .htaccess

    One of my favorite Apache modules is mod_rewrite. mod_rewrite allows me to manipulate page URLs so that I can search engine friendly URLs. Not every Apache server has the mod_rewrite module installed so you will want to add a conditional statement within your .htaccess file to make sure it's there.

  • .htaccess “Down For Maintenance” Page Redirect

    I recently needed to move one website from a shared web host to our internal server. After some discussion, we decided to simply add a "Site Down For Maintenance" page to the site to prevent users from submitting orders during the hosting change. Using the following .htaccess code snippet, we were able to send all users to a maintenance.html page no matter which page they requested:

  • Force Secure (SSL) Pages With .htaccess

    A while back, I shared a method for forcing a secure page using PHP. What if you want to force SSL (https://) on an entire website though? You don't want to have to put force-SSL PHP code on every page, right? Well, the website's .htaccess file comes to the rescue.