HTACCESS

Resources for configuring Apache Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) Server Access (.htaccess) files.

intro

1. Wikipedia: "HTACCESS"
2. DreamHost Knowledge Base: "HTACCESS Overview"
3. DreamHost Knowledge Base: "What Can I Do with an HTACCESS File?"
4. Apache HTTP Server Project Documentation: "HTACCESS Files"

redirects

1. DreamHost Knowledge Base: "How Can I Redirect and Rewrite my Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) with an HTACCESS File?"
2. Wikipedia: "HTTP Status Codes"
3. Mozilla Developer Network: "HTTP Response Status Codes"
4. Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) HTTP Working Group: "Internet Standard 97 (HTTP Semantics: Overview of Status Codes)"

MediaWiki shortlinks

1. Wikimedia MediaWiki: "Apache Short URL"

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^/?wiki(/.*)?$ %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/w/index.php [L]
RewriteRule ^/*$ %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/w/index.php [L]
# https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Short_URL/Apache#Setting_up_the_rewrite_rules

automatic indexing

1. Apache HTTP Server Project Documentation: "Automatic Index Module"

"FancyIndexing" must be enabled before adding icons.  "IconsAreLinks" can only be enabled after the icons are added.

IndexOptions Charset=UTF-8 +FancyIndexing NameWidth=*
DefaultIcon /icons/000.svg
AddIcon /icons/zzz.svg ^^DIRECTORY^^
AddIcon /icons/htm.svg .htm .html
AddIcon /icons/svg.svg .svg
AddIcon /icons/txt.svg .txt
AddIcon /icons/xls.svg .xls .xlsm .xlsx
IndexOptions +IconsAreLinks
ReadmeName /footer.html
# https://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/mod/mod_autoindex.html

character encoding

1. Apache HTTP Server Project Documentation: "Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension (MIME) Module (Add Charset)"

Unicode plaintext (TXT) files will not display correctly in the browser unless the character set (charset) encoding for TXT files is manually set to "UTF-8" (Unicode Transformation Format, Eight-Bit).

AddCharset UTF-8 .txt # https://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/mod/mod_mime.html#addcharset

HTACCESS for Nicole Sharp's Website

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^/?wiki(/.*)?$ %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/w/index.php [L]
RewriteRule ^/*$ %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/w/index.php [L]
# https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Short_URL/Apache#Setting_up_the_rewrite_rules

IndexOptions Charset=UTF-8 +FancyIndexing NameWidth=*
DefaultIcon /icons/000.svg
AddIcon /icons/zzz.svg ^^DIRECTORY^^
AddIcon /icons/7z0.svg .7z
AddIcon /icons/htm.svg .htm .html
AddIcon /icons/pdf.svg .pdf
AddIcon /icons/svg.svg .svg
AddIcon /icons/txt.svg .txt
AddIcon /icons/xls.svg .xls .xlsm .xlsx
IndexOptions +IconsAreLinks
ReadmeName /footer.html
# https://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/mod/mod_autoindex.html

AddCharset UTF-8 .txt # https://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/mod/mod_mime.html#addcharset

# Apache Hypertext Transfer Protocol Server Access (HTACCESS) for Nicole Sharp's Website: https://www.nicolesharp.net/
# Copyright (C) 2026-04-13 Nicole Sharp
# Unless otherwise noted, content on Nicole Sharp's Website is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) 4.0 International Public License: https://www.nicolesharp.net/wiki/CC_BY-SA

HTACCESS footer for Nicole Sharp's Website

You can use either "footer.txt" or "footer.html" to add content to the bottom of each automatically generated indexpage.  For Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), I try to use the HTM file extension for webpages written by humans for humans versus the HTML file extension for webpages written by machines or for machines.  The "footer.html" here is not a webpage or a valid HTML document: it is just a code snippet to be inserted before the closing </body> tag.  You should not have an HTML or BODY element in the "footer.html" file.

Since this hypertext will appear frequently on many different pages, you should not use redirecting links.  In the example below, this means using the full "/wiki/Creative_Commons_Attribution-ShareAlike_4.0_International_Public_License" and not the shorter "/wiki/CC_BY-SA".  Avoiding wikiredirects here should reduce server load.

<p>© (Copyright) 2026 <a href="/wiki/Nicole_Sharp">Nicole Sharp</a> (NicoleSharp.net).</p>

<p>Unless otherwise noted, content on this site is available under the <cite><a rel="copyright" href="/wiki/Creative_Commons_Attribution-ShareAlike_4.0_International_Public_License">Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International Public License</a> (CC BY-SA 4.0)</cite>.</p>

<p><strong><a rel="home index" href="/wiki/NikkiWiki">Return to the homepage for <cite>Nicole Sharp’s Website</cite>.</a></strong></p>

references

1. Wikibooks: "Apache HTTP Server"
2. Apache HTTP Server Project Documentation