htaccess [Introduction]: Rules, norms, control over your content published on the net

When we share something on the network, and I refer specifically to hosting, we need a server like Apache, Nginx, LightHTTPD, Cheroke, etc.

So, we share a folder, files and those who access our computer through their browser, will be able (using the same browser) to interact with what we have hosted, it can be a website, multimedia content, etc.

But… How can we put rules, norms of access to what we share?

There are many ways to do this, here I will talk about .htaccess.

What is htaccess?

In each folder that we have shared (hosted) we can put a file .htaccess (notice the period at the beginning of the name, this indicates that it is hidden). This file will be our police for calling it in some way, because in it we can write rules or norms that will help us to manipulate / manage access to that same folder where the file is, to the folder and files (and subfolders) that this same contain.

Simply put. If I have the folder «/test/«, Making use of a .htaccess I can configure which IPs I want to access and which not, configure if I want that when someone enters this folder it will automatically redirect them to another site, and a VERY long etc.

Let's get into the subject a bit ...

For example, we have a folder called «giant»(Without the quotes), which can be accessed through our own IP address, or through a specific domain. In other words, we can access the content of this folder through:

1. http://10.10.0.5/dev/
2. http://kzkggaara.net/dev/
3. Also by http://127.0.0.1/dev/ y http://localhost/dev/

In this folder we are developing something new, working on a new project or something, and we do not want anyone else except ourselves to access, that is ... only we can enter and see the content of that folder, the rest who try to access simply will not be able to , as access will be denied.

To achieve this, we create a file .htaccess in the folder giant, and in this file we put:

order deny, allow
deny from all
allow from 127.0.0.1

Put this in the .htaccess, will deny access to any computer other than 127.0.0.1 (that is, the computer itself where Apache is installed) when you try to access the folder you will get this error:

If you want to also allow the IP 10.10.0.5 to access it, just add a line ... looking like this:

order deny, allow
deny from all
allow from 127.0.0.1
allow from 10.10.0.5

This is the essence ... the basic or the simplest could be said 🙂

I will put several tips on how to better manage our folders using .htaccessIf someone has a suggestion for a tip, question or something like that, tell me 😉

regards