We are happy to introduce a new series of articles called Learning More About Hosting. These articles are designed to assist you with common hosting questions by summarizing the usage and pointing you to the articles we have in place for these specific issues.

We'd like it if you would share any experiences you've had with the subject at hand by leaving your comments. Also, feel free to suggest any topics you would like to see covered in a future article.

Lets get started with .htaccess.

.htaccess is a mini config file that modifies your web configuration on a per-directory basis. These files are a simple ASCII text file with the name .htaccess. It is not an extension like .html or .txt. The entire file name is .htaccess. .htaccess is Linux specific and the some common uses for an .htaccess file are as follows.

Password Protection
Even easier then this, is our new File Manager feature that automates the process to make password protection easier. You can see more on that here.

For those of you who love a challenge and want to use .htaccess to password protect, you can use the following article for more details.
Using .htpasswd With Your Linux Shared Hosting Account


URL re-direct
Mod_rewrite manipulates browser-submitted URLs and translates them to deliver content to the browser. For example, if I want to set up a site on a subdomain such as, mydomain.com/site, yet want to redirect it  to mydomain.com, then you would use this process. Many choose mod_rewrite over the typical subdomain forwarding for various reasons. It can be to increase site security or to make the site static to increase site visibility and more.
What is mod_rewrite?
How do I use mod_rewrite?


For more on how to utilize .htaccess, use these links.
What is .htaccess?
Apache Website Documentation


Do you have any tips on .htaccess? Let us know!