Overview of the “application of principle”

Much of what we find on search engine optimization (SEO) blogs, internet marketing web-inars or your favorite web design news-feeds contain basic strategies to propel your website into the top SERP’s. While this is useful information, sometimes putting these strategies into practice for web designers, internet marketeers, digital strategists or web developers—is very misunderstood, and the ability to put it these strategies into practice, or apply it in a real world situation is lacking.

Much of this APPLICATION of PRINCIPLE—relies on technique, understanding multiple facets of design and development, technical knowledge, past experience (seeing what works and where), trial and error, keeping up with the changing landscape, and many many other factors. The point is that there are “many” and to be able to apply SEO and internet marketing with results—we need to understand strategy and principles as well as being able to apply it. The “apply” is usually taken for granted, and while there are hundreds of thousands out there talking about it, only a few of us know how to apply it with beautiful results!

One small but powerful thing to be aware of is a .htaccess file—here is some basic information

.htaccess (hypertext access) is the default name of a directory-level configuration file that allows for decentralized management of web server configuration. The .htaccess file is placed inside the web tree, and is able to override a subset of the server’s global configuration; the extent of this subset is defined by the web server administrator.

Nowadays .htaccess can override many other configuration settings, mostly related to content control, e.g. content type and character set, CGI handlers, etc.

Below are some basic tips and uses of .htaccess file

1. Create a custom error page.
.htaccess makes it easy to create your own custom error pages. Just create your custom error page files and then add this code to your .htaccess file:
ErrorDocument 401 /401.php  
ErrorDocument 403 /403.php  
ErrorDocument 404 /404.php  
ErrorDocument 500 /500.php
(you should replace the “/500.php” or whatever with your own file path and name.)

2. Prevent directory browsing.
If you don’t include an index file in a directory, visitors can browse the directory itself. But preventing that is as easy as adding a single line to your .htaccess file:
Options All –Indexes

3.Block access to your .htaccess file
By adding he following code to your htaccess file will prevent attempts to access your htaccess file. This extra layer of security protects your htaccess file by displaying a 403 error message on the browser.
# secure htaccess file 
 
Â order allow,deny 
Â deny from all

4. Set the default page of each directory.
If you don’t want to use an index page in each directory, you can set the default page visited when someone reaches (like an about page or a page offering the newest content) that directory by adding this:
DirectoryIndex news.html
(And of course you’d replace the “news.html” bit with whatever you want to use as the default.)

5.Redirect everyone to different site except few IPs
If you want to redirect all the visitors to a different IP. Also give access to certain  few IPs. You can use the code below:
ErrorDocument 403 http://www.youdomain.com 
Order deny,allow 
Deny from all 
Allow from 124.34.48.165 
Allow from 102.54.68.123

6. Redirect Visitors While You Update Your Web Design Site
Update and test your site while visitors are redirected to the page of your choice:
order deny,allow 
deny from all 
allow from 123.123.123.123
ErrorDocument 403 /page.html
allow from all
Replace 123.123.123.123 with your IP address
. Also replace page.html with the name of the page you want visitors to see.

7. Disguise your file types.
You can disguise all of your file types by making them appear as PHP files. Just insert this snippet in:
ForceType application/x-httpd-php

8. Protect your site from hotlinking.
The last thing you want is for those stealing your content to also be able to embed the images hosted on your server in their posts. It takes up your bandwidth and can quickly get expensive. Here’s a way to block hotlinking within htaccess:
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RewriteEngine On  
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$  
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://([ -a-z0-9]  \.)?domain\.com [NC]  
RewriteRule \.(gif|jpe?g|png)$ – [F,NC,L]
(Of course you’ll want to replace the domain\.com with your own domain name.)

9. Restrict file upload limits for PHP:
You can restrict the maximum file size
for uploading in PHP, as well as the maximum execution time. Just add this:

php_value upload_max_filesize 10M  
php_value post_max_size 10M  
php_value max_execution_time 200  
php_value max_input_time 200
Line one specifies the maximum file size for uploading; line two is the maximum size for post data; line three is the maximum time in seconds a script can run before it’s terminated; and line four is the maximum amount of time in seconds a script is allowed to parse input data.

10. Force a file to download with a “Save As” prompt.
If you want to force someone to download a file instead of opening it in their browser, use this code:
AddType application/octet-stream .doc .mov .avi .pdf .xls .mp4

11. Redirect to a secure https connection
If you want to redirect your entire site to a secure https connection, use the following:
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RewriteEngine On  
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !on  
RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI}

12.Block script execution.
You can stop scripts in certain languages from running with this:
Options –ExecCGI  
AddHandler cgi-script .pl .py .php .jsp. htm .shtml .sh .asp .cgi
Just replace the types of scripts you want to block.

13. Set up a 301 redirect.
If you move around the structure of your site and need to redirect some old URLs to their new locations, the following bit of code will do so for you:
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Redirect 301 /original/filename.html http://domain.com/updated/filename.html

Important Note:

1-Be careful of spelling- .htaccess is not forgiving of spelling errors.
2-htaccess is case sensitive. If something is shown in the examples with a capital letter, make sure it’s capitalized in your htaccess file.

For readers interested in advance knowledge, I will recommend the following guides:
•http://www.askapache.com/htaccess/apache-htaccess.html
•http://perishablepress.com/press/2006/01/10/stupid-htaccess-tricks/
•http://www.noupe.com/php/htaccess-techniques.html
•http://www.thomsonchemmanoor.com/16-useful-htaccess-tricks-and-hacks-for-web-developers.html
•http://frontdeskapp.com/blog/5-htaccess-tricks-every-webmaster-should-know/

Source: http://www.sem-seo-resources.com/node/63