.htaccess File Wizard

.htaccess File Wizard

The .htaccess file is an ASCII text document that can be placed in any directory on your site. It can be used to customize some apache server operation in your site. Ask your System Administrator if your server is running Apache prior to using this tool. You must use FTP software in ASCII mode to upload or edit your .htaccess file.

When you have finished creating your .htaccess code, click on the "Select All" button and copy (ctrl + c) and paste (ctrl + v) the code into a text editor and save the file as .htaccess.

FRONTPAGE® USERS: DO NOT OVERWRITE YOUR EXISTING .htacess OR YOUR SITE WILL NOT WORK!! Use the code generator to make lines to add to existing .htacess file only in this case!!

Note:
We do not provide free support for creating the .htaccess file and its implementation on your web server if you should run into difficulties. If you run into problems, all you need to do is upload a blank .htaccess file to the server.

Enter your server path

You need to enter your server path in order for the script to provide the correct server path. Server paths will vary from server to server. If you are unsure what your server path is, ask your system administrator or you can Telnet to your web account, go to the directory that you wish to put the .htaccess file in and issue the "pwd" UNIX command. After the command has been issued you will be presented with the server path. WeDoHosting.com customers the standard path is htdocs/

Error 404 File Not found

You have been to those websites that have a custom webpage that lets vistors know that the page no longer exists. You can now do this yourself by creating a custom "File not found" page. Type the URL including the filename of the error page.

ie; http://www.yourdomain.com/error.html

Different Default Home Page

While many webserver's default filename is set to "index.html" some programmers and programs use a different default filename ie: default.htm, index.htm or Main.html... This can be a problem for some large sites that would require renaming all the links to a different default filename. To make your life easier, you can change the default filename by typing it in the box below and clicking on the "Add it" button. When this file is uploaded to the server, all the subdirectories will have the default filename changed.

Cache Control

This is a very handy feature of the Apache server that allows you to specify the amount of time that a proxy server will store your website.

If access is used, the date of expiration is different for each client; this can be good for image files that don't change very often, particularly for a set of related documents that all refer to the same images
If modification is selected, all current copies of the document in all caches will expire at the same time, which can be good for something like a weekly notice that's always found at the same URL.

Password Protection

For those who wish to password protect a directory on their site, this utility will make the job a lot easier.

Enter the server path to your password file:

Enter the text you would like for the
Username and Password dialog box:

.htaccess file contents