.htaccess block hidden directories except one - .htaccess

I'm trying to allow access to a folder called .well-known but I've found this rule that blocks hidden directories;
# block hidden directories
RewriteRule "(^|/)\." - [F]
Obviously there's a reason why this was added (I inherited the code) but I was wondering if I could keep this rule but add an exception for the .well-known folder?

You can indeed! You need to include a Rewrite Condition:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/\.well-known
Put this before the actual RewriteRule, this condition basically tells the server NOT to hide the .well-known folder.
Make sure you clear your cache before testing this.

Related

Eliminate duplicate directory name in url using .htaccess file

For some reason, I'm getting duplicate directory names in some urls within a subfolder on our website. This seems to affect only crawlers as the files within this directory work fine when navigated.
I'd like to simply remove the duplicate directory name and make mydomain.com/sub/sub redirect to mydomain.com/sub.
I've tried many versions but my .htaccess skills are lacking apparently. I currently have (not working of course):
RewriteRule ^mydomain.com/sub/sub/(.*) mydomain.com/sub/$1 [L,R=301]
RewriteRule ^mydomain.com/sub/sub/(.*) mydomain.com/sub/$1 [L,R=301]
The RewriteRule pattern matches against the URL-path only - you appear to have included (part of) the domain name. Also, mydomain.com in the substitution string is going to be seen as a relative subdirectory.
Assuming you have a limited number of subdirectories where this occurs then to reduce /sub/sub/<something> to just /sub/<something> you would do something like this:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^sub/sub/(.*) /sub/$1 [R=301,L]
If you have other directives in you .htaccess file, then this needs to go near the top.
First test with 302 (temporary) redirects to avoid potential caching issues. Clear your browser cache before testing.
But to echo #arkascha's comment... the reason why crawlers are finding these URLs in the first place would seem to be a fault in your URL structure/internal links - so this is what ultimately needs to be fixed.

How do I do a htaccess rewrite to another folder for a single file?

We moved a part of our site from one sub folder to another. I want to put permanent redirects (301) into htaccess for the files in this folder (some have changed their filename as well, so I can't just setup one rule for the whole folder). Here's what I'm trying
RewriteRule ^search/tutorial-search.html$ db/tutorial.php [R=301]
This doesn't work though, I get a 404 response when now entering the old URL. I find this curious as I had a rule in place for ages that does work, which looks like this:
RewriteRule ^search/tutorial-search.html$ search/tutorial-search.php
I really don't see the big difference. I also tried the following (among others) but it doesn't work either
RewriteRule ^search/tutorial-search.html$ db/tutorial.php
What exactly is causing this to fail? Just to make sure I put all of these at the exact same line of the htaccess file. Is it because I'm rewriting to another folder? Thanks :)
Try adding a leading slash to your rewrite targets, because when redirecting, apache could be mistaking a URL-path with a file-path.
RewriteRule ^search/tutorial-search.html$ /db/tutorial.php [R=301]

Can one include separate files in htaccess for a list of redirects?

My main htaccess file does a bunch of things for my site to function correctly.
I have added redirects for pages that have moved. I don't have root access to the server and using .htaccess is my only option.
Is it possible to include separate files for the redirects in the .htaccess file so I can keep them separate and write programatically to the additional files that hold my redirects?
Basically I want to reference separate files from my .htaccess to manage rules dynamically and also neaten up one long .htaccess file with a few smaller files.
I also want to add redirect rules on the fly as things change on the site within my application.
You can use a RewriteMap http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.3/rewrite/rewritemap.html
Let's say your map file looks like this and is called moved.map:-
/about profile
/page/that/has/moved new/location
You .htaccess would need something like this:-
RewriteMap moved txt:moved.map
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^(.*)$
RewriteCond ${moved:%1|NOT_PRESENT} !NOT_PRESENT [NC]
RewriteRule .? ${moved:%1} [NC,R=301]
This will redirect with a 301 status code http://your.domain.com/about to http://your.domain.com/profile and redirect http://your.domain.com/page/that/has/moved to http://your.domain.com/new/location
You can then programmatically create moved.map.
I hope that helps.
If you are using .htaccess files then don't bother with RewriteMap -- it only applies if you have root access to the server or vhost config, which is never the case when you purchase a shared service offering.
If you are constrained to use .htaccess files then you have two options:
The first is to do what some packages do and that is to get your application to rewrite the .htaccess file based on a rewrite map that you maintain within in it. The best way to do this is to have "bookends" in your .htaccess file e.g.
##++AUTOMATIC rewrite rules
<rules inserted by your app>
##--AUTOMATIC rewrite rules
And when an update occurs have your app read in the .htaccess, swap out the section between ##(++|--)AUTOMATIC rewrite rules, write it back to a temp file, then move the temp file to .htaccess (this makes the rewrtie-back atomic on *nix OSs).
The second which might work if you know some regexp regular pattern which covers the rewrites (this is often the case) then use a rule to map them to a redirector script which looks up the new target and itself issues a:
$server = $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'];
header( "Location: http://$server/$newTarget?$parameters", TRUE, 301 );
Note the 301 redirect -- this means that client browsers should cache this and remember this in future.

URL rewrite conditions in htaccess file

I need some help with .htaccess. I've been using URL rewrites, but not conditions, and I'm pretty sure I need them seeing as I can't get this working.
The URL structure I need is -> forum/catnamehere (which shows the page called catnamehere)
and child structure -> forum/catnamehere/fornamehere (which shows the child page of the cat)
However, somehow I fail to do this, making me believe I need conditions.
You should be able to do this with two rules.
Put your .htaccess file in the forum directory, and add the following:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9_-]+)(/?)$ complexForumPath.php?catName=$1 [QSA]
RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9_-]+)/([a-zA-Z0-9_-]+)(/?)$ complexForumPath.php?catName=$1&subPage=$2 [QSA]
The first rule will grab stuff like forum/abc123_
And the second rule will grab forum/abc123_/abc123_

Use htaccess to mask folder name

Here's a problem I'm always wanting to solve with htaccess. I haven't found a way yet, though it looks like it should be possible - perhaps someone can help.
Let's say I have a folder at the root of my site called /foo/. I want users to be able to access that folder at the path /bar/, but for various reasons I can't rename the folder.
So as not to create confusion I only want one path to ever be seen - that is to say, I don't want people to use the name /foo/ to access the folder; they should always use /bar/. If someone goes to example.com/foo/, their browser should redirect to example.com/bar/ - but the content returned should be the content of /foo/.
To make matters more complicated, pages in /foo/ have dependencies (images, stylesheets, links to other pages, etc) within /foo/ which are hardcoded and can't be changed. These must, of course, still work.
So, to summarise, this is what I want :
Requests for example.com/foo/ should redirect to example.com/bar/.
Requests for example.com/bar/ should return the contents of example.com/foo/.
Is this possible? It looks on the surface as if it would create an infinite redirect... but I'm pretty sure there are ways to prevent that in htaccess, aren't there?
I'd be very grateful for any help.
(PS - for a little extra background: The normal reason I want to do this is to rename the wordpress /wp-admin/ directory to something more professional and easy for customers to remember, such as /admin/. But the same system should work for masking any path in this way.)
I found a sort of workaround - by using a symlink and htaccess in combination.
First I created a symlink from /bar to /foo/.
Then I put this in htaccess :
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteRule ^foo/(.*)$ bar/$1 [R,L]
This has exactly the desired result - example.com/bar/ shows the content of the /foo/ directory, and example.com/foo/ redirects to example.com/bar/
But if anyone can come up with a pure htaccess solution I'd much prefer that!
Update :
Ok, I've finally found out how to do this. It turns out to be quite simple...
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^GET\ /foo/
RewriteRule ^foo/(.*)$ bar/$1 [R,L]
RewriteRule ^bar/(.*)$ foo/$1
The only problem is that it doesn't take account of RewriteBase, so you have to include the full path in the first line (after ^GET\).
If I understand correctly what you want is something like this inside your .htaccess file:
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^foo/$ bar/
RewriteRule ^bar/$ foo/
</IfModule>

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