Apache HTTP Server Tutorial: .htaccess files - Apache HTTP Server Version 2.4








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Apache > HTTP Server > Documentation > Version 2.4 > How-To / TutorialsApache HTTP Server Tutorial: .htaccess files


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.htaccess files provide a way to make configuration
changes on a per-directory basis, without modifying the main server 
configuration files directly.

 .htaccess files
 What they are/How to use them
 When (not) to use .htaccess files
 How directives are applied
 Authentication example
 Server Side Includes example
 Rewrite Rules in .htaccess files
 CGI example
 Troubleshooting



.htaccess files ¶
    Related ModulesRelated Directivescoremod_authn_filemod_authz_groupfilemod_includemod_mimemod_rewriteAccessFileNameAllowOverrideAllowOverrideListOptionsAddHandlerSetHandlerAuthTypeAuthNameAuthUserFileAuthGroupFileRequire



What they are/How to use them ¶


    .htaccess files (or "distributed configuration files")
    provide a way to make configuration changes on a per-directory basis. A
    file, containing one or more configuration directives, is placed in a
    particular document directory, and the directives apply to that
    directory, and all subdirectories thereof.

    Note:
      If you want to call your .htaccess file something
      else, you can change the name of the file using the AccessFileName directive. For example,
      if you would rather call the file .config then you
      can put the following in your server configuration file:

AccessFileName ".config"

    

    Directives in .htaccess files use the same syntax as
    in the main configuration
    files. What you are permitted to put in these files is determined by the
    AllowOverride and
    AllowOverrideList directives.
    AllowOverride specifies, in
    categories, what directives will be honored if they are found in a
    .htaccess file, while AllowOverrideList names individual
    directives to permit (see below). If a directive
    is permitted, the documentation for that directive will contain an Override section,
    specifying what value must be in AllowOverride for that
    directive to be permitted.

    The default value of AllowOverride is None.
    This means .htaccess files are completely ignored
    unless you explicitly enable them for a directory.

    For example, if you look at the documentation for the AddDefaultCharset
    directive, you will find that it is permitted in .htaccess
    files. (See the Context line in the directive summary.) The Override line reads
    FileInfo. Thus, you must have at least
    AllowOverride FileInfo for this directive to be
    honored in .htaccess files.
    

When (not) to use .htaccess files ¶

    If you have access to the main server configuration file, you
    should put all of your configuration there instead of in
    .htaccess files. This includes user authentication,
    mod_rewrite rules, and anything else you might be
    tempted to put in .htaccess. Directives in the main
    configuration are loaded once at server start, rather than on every
    request, and mod_rewrite in particular works better
    in server configuration context.

    .htaccess files should be used in a case where the
    content providers need to make configuration changes to the server on a
    per-directory basis, but do not have root access on the server system.
    This is common with managed hosting environments, control-panel-based
    hosting (such as cPanel or Plesk), and content management systems where
    the application ships a .htaccess file as part of its
    distribution. In the event that the server administrator is not willing
    to make frequent configuration changes, it might be desirable to permit
    individual users to make these changes in .htaccess files
    for themselves.

    There are two reasons to prefer the main configuration file
    over .htaccess: performance and security.

    Performance: When AllowOverride
    is set to allow the use of .htaccess files, httpd will
    look in every directory for .htaccess files. Thus,
    permitting .htaccess files causes a performance hit,
    whether or not you actually even use them! Also, the
    .htaccess file is loaded every time a document is
    requested.

    Additionally, httpd must look for .htaccess files
    in all higher-level directories to assemble the full set of applicable
    directives. (See section on how
    directives are applied.) Thus, if a file is requested out of a
    directory /www/htdocs/example, httpd must look for the
    following files:

/.htaccess
/www/.htaccess
/www/htdocs/.htaccess
/www/htdocs/example/.htaccess


    And so, for each file access out of that directory, there are 4
    additional file-system accesses, even if none of those files are
    present. (This would only be the case if
    .htaccess files were enabled for /, which
    is not usually the case.)

    Security: You are permitting
    users to modify server configuration, which may result in changes over
    which you have no control. Carefully consider whether you want to give
    your users this privilege. Giving users less
    privileges than they need will lead to additional technical support
    requests. Make sure you clearly tell your users what level of
    privileges you have given them. Specifying exactly what you have set
    AllowOverride to, and pointing them
    to the relevant documentation, prevents confusion
    later.

    If you need to grant .htaccess access but want to
    limit it to specific directives rather than entire categories, use the
    AllowOverrideList directive. This
    lets you name individual directives that are permitted, providing
    finer-grained control than AllowOverride alone:

# Allow only specific directives, not entire categories
AllowOverride None
AllowOverrideList Redirect RedirectMatch RewriteEngine RewriteRule RewriteCond


    With this configuration, any directive not explicitly listed will
    cause a server error if encountered in a .htaccess file.
    This is a useful middle ground between full override access and no
    override access.

    Placing a directive in a .htaccess
    file in a directory /www/htdocs/example is completely equivalent to placing that same directive in a
    <Directory "/www/htdocs/example"> section in your main server
    configuration:

    .htaccess file in /www/htdocs/example:

    Contents of .htaccess file in
    /www/htdocs/exampleAddType text/example ".exm"


    Section from your httpd.conf
    file<Directory "/www/htdocs/example">
AddType text/example ".exm"
</Directory>


    The use of .htaccess files can be disabled completely
    by setting the AllowOverride
    directive to none:

AllowOverride None



How directives are applied ¶

    The configuration directives found in a .htaccess file
    are applied to the directory in which the .htaccess file
    is found, and to all subdirectories thereof. Remember that there may have been .htaccess files
    in directories higher up. Directives are applied in the order that they
    are found. Therefore, a .htaccess file in a particular
    directory may override directives found in .htaccess files
    found higher up in the directory tree. And those, in turn, may have
    overridden directives found yet higher up, or in the main server
    configuration file itself.

    Example:

    In the directory /www/htdocs/example1 we have a
    .htaccess file containing the following:

Options +ExecCGI


    You must have "AllowOverride Options" in effect
    to permit the use of the "Options" directive in
    .htaccess files.

    In the directory /www/htdocs/example1/example2 we have
    a .htaccess file containing:

Options Includes


    Because of this second .htaccess file, in the directory
    /www/htdocs/example1/example2, CGI execution is not
    permitted, as only Options Includes is in effect, which
    completely overrides any earlier setting that may have been in
    place.

    Merging of .htaccess with the main
    configuration files

    As discussed in the documentation on Configuration Sections,
    .htaccess files can override the <Directory> sections for
    the corresponding directory, but will be overridden by other types
    of configuration sections from the main configuration files. This
    fact can be used to enforce certain configurations, even in the
    presence of a liberal AllowOverride setting. For example, to
    prevent script execution while allowing anything else to be set in
    .htaccess you can use:

<Directory "/www/htdocs">
AllowOverride All
</Directory>

<Location "/">
Options +IncludesNoExec -ExecCGI
</Location>


    This example assumes that your DocumentRoot is /www/htdocs.




Authentication example ¶

    As with any .htaccess use, placing these directives in
    a <Directory> block is
    preferred when you have access to the main configuration (see
    above). The following example shows the
    .htaccess approach:

    .htaccess file contents:

AuthType Basic
AuthName "Password Required"
AuthUserFile "/www/passwords/password.file"
AuthGroupFile "/www/passwords/group.file"
Require group admins


    AllowOverride AuthConfig must be in effect
    for these directives to have any effect.

    Please see the authentication tutorial for a
    more complete discussion of authentication and authorization.


Server Side Includes example ¶

    Another use of .htaccess files is to enable Server Side
    Includes for a particular directory. This may be done with the following
    configuration directives, placed in a .htaccess file in
    the desired directory:

Options +Includes
AddType text/html "shtml"
AddHandler server-parsed shtml


    AllowOverride Options and AllowOverride
    FileInfo must both be in effect for these directives to have any
    effect.

    Please see the SSI tutorial for a more
    complete discussion of server-side includes.


Rewrite Rules in .htaccess files ¶
When using RewriteRule in
.htaccess files, be aware that the per-directory context
changes things a bit. In particular, rules are taken to be relative to
the current directory, rather than being the original requested URI.
Consider the following examples:

# In httpd.conf
RewriteRule "^/images/(.+)\.jpg" "/images/$1.png"

# In .htaccess in root dir
RewriteRule "^images/(.+)\.jpg" "images/$1.png"

# In .htaccess in images/
RewriteRule "^(.+)\.jpg" "$1.png"


In a .htaccess in your document directory, the leading
slash is removed from the value supplied to RewriteRule, and in the
images subdirectory, /images/ is removed from
it. Thus, your regular expression needs to omit that portion as
well.

In .htaccess context, regular expressions are
recompiled on every request, whereas in the main server configuration they
are compiled once and cached.

Consult the mod_rewrite documentation for
further details on using mod_rewrite.



CGI example ¶

    CGI scripts are a legacy mechanism for dynamic content. For new
    deployments, consider using mod_proxy_fcgi with a
    FastCGI application server, or a framework-specific handler. The
    information below remains useful for environments that still rely on
    traditional CGI.

    You may wish to use a .htaccess file to permit the
    execution of CGI programs in a particular directory. This may be
    implemented with the following configuration:

Options +ExecCGI
AddHandler cgi-script "cgi" "py"


    Alternately, if you wish to have all files in the given directory be
    considered to be CGI programs, this may be done with the following
    configuration:

Options +ExecCGI
SetHandler cgi-script


    AllowOverride Options and AllowOverride
    FileInfo must both be in effect for these directives to have any
    effect.

    Please see the CGI tutorial for a more
    complete discussion of CGI programming and configuration.



Troubleshooting ¶

    When you put configuration directives in a .htaccess
    file, and you don't get the desired effect, there are a number of
    things that may be going wrong.

    Most commonly, the problem is that AllowOverride is not
    set such that your configuration directives are being honored. Make
    sure that you don't have a AllowOverride None in effect
    for the file scope in question. A good test for this is to put a
    nonsense word in your .htaccess file and reload the
    page:

TestMe


    If a server error (HTTP 500) is
    not generated, then you almost certainly have AllowOverride
    None in effect.

    If, on the other hand, you are getting server errors when trying to
    access documents, check your httpd error log. It will likely tell you
    that the directive used in your .htaccess file is not
    permitted.

[Thu Jun 18 09:12:31.528374 2026] [core:alert] [pid 12345] [client 192.168.1.50:54321] /var/www/html/.htaccess: DirectoryIndex not allowed here


    This will indicate either that you've used a directive that is
    never permitted in .htaccess files, or that you don't have AllowOverride set to
    a level sufficient for the directive you've used. Consult the
    documentation for that particular directive to determine which is
    the case.

    Alternately, it may tell you that you had a syntax error in your
    usage of the directive itself.

[Thu Jun 18 09:14:02.946218 2026] [core:alert] [pid 12345] [client 192.168.1.50:54321] /var/www/html/.htaccess: RewriteCond: bad flag delimiters


    In this case, the error message should be specific to the
    particular syntax error that you have committed.



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