For all your apache fans, here is an online htaccess editor!

Makes everything so easy doesn’t it? When I first started playing around with .htaccess, I had problems understanding a lot of it’s functions and coding. Took me a while to get use to it and it really took me sometime. And I am still not good at it. But when this online editor, you can do some of the most basic functions without going in-depth. You don’t need to learn a whole bunch of stuff and I believe that understanding .htaccess is not that important since you probably won’t be using it a lot anyways.

What I usually use the .htaccess is to do a 301 redirect of my webpages. It’s a good practice especially if you are doing Search Engine Optimization. To rank well in Search Engines, one of the most important thing is links. If someone links to you, it’s just like a vote. They are in fact voting for you. And if a authority site links to you, the value of the link is very high and thus very much trusted by the Search Engine. However, let’s say one day, you need to change the structure of your website (for example when you change your script) and the old links no longer points to the correct URL, it loses it’s value. What you can do is to do a 301 redirect so that Search Engine bots will be redirected to another URL of your choice. Of course, if the link is relevant, then it will certainly help boost your rankings. A 301 redirect is something like telling users that it is “permanently redirected” to another URL.

Other uses of .htaccess is to create a basic authentication for your users, block access to certain parts of your website, deny access to certain IP ranges and so on. The online .htaccess editor has it all. You just need to type in the information and you are done.