5 Most Useful htaccess Tricks for WordPress

5 Most Useful htaccess Tricks for WordPress Are you looking for some useful .htaccess tricks for your WordPress site. The .htaccess file is a powerful configuration file which allows you to do a lot of neat things on your website. In this article, we will show you some of the most useful .htaccess tricks for WordPress that you can try right away.

What is .htaccess File and How to Edit it?

The .htaccess file is a server configuration file. It allows you to define rules for your server to follow for your website.

WordPress uses .htaccess file to generate SEO friendly URL structure. However, this file can do a lot more.

The .htaccess file is located in your WordPress site’s root folder. You will need to connect to your website using an FTP client to edit it.

1. Protect Your WordPress Admin Area

You can use .htaccess to protect your WordPress admin area by limiting the access to selected IP addresses only. Simply copy and paste this code into your .htaccess file:

AuthUserFile /dev/null
AuthGroupFile /dev/null
AuthName "WordPress Admin Access Control"
AuthType Basic
<LIMIT GET>
order deny,allow
deny from all
# whitelist Syed's IP address
allow from xx.xx.xx.xxx
# whitelist David's IP address
allow from xx.xx.xx.xxx
</LIMIT>

Don’t forget to replace xx values with your own IP address. If you use more than one IP address to access the internet, then make sure you add them as well.

2. Protect Your WordPress Configuration wp-config.php File

Probably the most important file in your WordPress website’s root directory is wp-config.php file. It contains information about your WordPress database and how to connect to it.

To protect your wp-config.php file from unathorized access, simply add this code to your .htaccess file:

<files wp-config.php>
order allow,deny
deny from all
</files>

3. Ban Suspicious IP Addresses

Are you seeing unusually high requests to your website from a specific IP address? You can easily block those requests by blocking the IP address in your .htaccess file.

Add the following code to your .htaccess file:

<Limit GET POST>
order allow,deny
deny from xxx.xxx.xx.x
allow from all
</Limit>

4. Disable Image Hotlinking in WordPress Using .htaccess

Other websites directly hotlinking images from your site can make your WordPress site slow and exceed your bandwidth limit. This isn’t a big issue for most smaller websites. However, if you run a popular website or a website with lots of photos, then this could become a serious concern.

You can prevent image hotlinking by adding this code to your .htaccess file:

#disable hotlinking of images with forbidden or custom image option
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http(s)?://(www\.)?wpbeginner.com [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http(s)?://(www\.)?google.com [NC]
RewriteRule \.(jpg|jpeg|png|gif)$ – [NC,F,L]

5. Increase File Upload Size in WordPress

One of the methods that has worked for many users is by adding following code to their .htaccess file:

php_value upload_max_filesize 64M
php_value post_max_size 64M
php_value max_execution_time 300
php_value max_input_time 300

This code simply tells your web server to use these values to increase file upload size as well as maximum execution time in WordPress.