Web Design & SEO For Small Businesses

The .htaccess files (Hypertext Access file) is a very powerful configuration tool on Apache web server. The Apache web server has a number of configuration options that are available to the server administrator. The .htaccess is a simple ASCII text file placed in your website root directory. You can create and edit an .htaccess file using a text editor like notepad.

Here in this blog post I have come up with useful 16 tips and hacks to configure your web server.
As a configuration file .htaccess if a very powerful and a slight syntax error can result in a severe malfunction of your server. So to avoid that always try to keep a backup copies of all your files from the server before working with the .htaccess file.

1. Creating a custom error page with .htaccess on a linux apache is a very simple task. Using you a text editor like notepad you create an .htaccess files. Custom error pages give your website an professional look and catch those visitors who reach your website following a back link.

ErrorDocument 401 /error/401.php
ErrorDocument 403 /error/403.php
ErrorDocument 404 /error/404.php
ErrorDocument 500 /error/500.php

2. How to set the timezone on your server

SetEnv TZ America/Houston

3. Block IPs Using htaccess
Sometime you need to block certain IPs from accessing your entire site or directory. Its pretty simple task. All you have to do is inside the .htaccess file is put the following code.

allow from all
deny from 145.186.14.122
deny from 124.15

If you use the whole IP or a part of the IP to block and add the new ones in a new line.
When someone trying to access your site from the banned ip they will get a 403 error access forbidden message.

4. SEO Friendly 301 permanent redirects for bad/old links and moved links

Redirect 301 /d/file.html http://www.htaccesselite.com/r/file.html

5. Set the Email Address for the Server Administrator - Using this code you can specifying the default email address for the server administrator.

ServerSignature EMail
SetEnv SERVER_ADMIN default@domain.com

6. Hotlinking protection with .htaccess is very important because anyone can hot link to your images and eat up all your bandwith of your server. The following code will help you to prevent that.

Options +FollowSymlinks
# Protect Hotlinking
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www.)?domainname.com/ [nc]
RewriteRule .*.(gif|jpg|png)$ http://domainname.com/img/hotlink_f_o.png [nc]

7. Block all requests from user agent – by creating a perfect .htaccess ban list, you can block all of unwanted user agents that will keep your server load down. Also Check out this interesting thread on webmaster world about the  228 user agents ban list.

## .htaccess Code :: BEGIN
## Block Bad Bots by user-Agent
SetEnvIfNoCase user-Agent ^FrontPage [NC,OR]
SetEnvIfNoCase user-Agent ^Java.* [NC,OR]
SetEnvIfNoCase user-Agent ^Microsoft.URL [NC,OR]
SetEnvIfNoCase user-Agent ^MSFrontPage [NC,OR]
SetEnvIfNoCase user-Agent ^Offline.Explorer [NC,OR]
SetEnvIfNoCase user-Agent ^[Ww]eb[Bb]andit [NC,OR]
SetEnvIfNoCase user-Agent ^Zeus [NC]
<Limit GET POST HEAD>
Order Allow,Deny
Allow from all
Deny from env=bad_bot
</Limit>
## .htaccess Code :: END

8. Redirect everyone to different site except few IP -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

9. Don’t want to display download request – Usually when you try to download something from a web server you get a request asking whether you want to save the file or open it.
To avoid that you can use the below code on your .htaccess file.

AddType application/octet-stream .pdf
AddType application/octet-stream .zip
AddType application/octet-stream .mov

10. Change the file type – Make any file be a certain kind of file type Makes image.jpg, index.html, default.cgi all act as php

<Files test>
ForceType application/x-httpd-php
SetHandler application/x-httpd-php
</Files>

11. 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
<Files .htaccess>
 order allow,deny
 deny from all
</Files>

12. Protect access to certain specific file on your server - this can be done by adding the below mentioned code. For example you want to block with the file name default.jpg This will prevent the viewing of this file.

# prevent access of a certain file
<files default.jpg>
 order allow,deny
 deny from all
</files>

13. Prevent access to unauthorized browsing – Protecting specific directory browsing can be done by intructing the server to serve a Forbidden and Authorization required message while anyone requests to view that particular directory. Usually if you site doesn’t have a default index page any files within that directory is accessible to the visitors. To avoid that use the following code in the .htaccess file.

# disable directory browsing
Options All -Indexes

14. Setting the default page – You can set the default page of a directory to any page you like. For example in this code the default page is set as about.html instead of index.html

# serve alternate default index page
DirectoryIndex about.html

15. Password protect your directories and files - You can create authentication for certain files and directories from being access. The code has examples of both password protection for a single file and password protection for a entire directory.

# to protect a file
<Files secure.php>
AuthType Basic
AuthName “Prompt”
AuthUserFile /home/path/.htpasswd
Require valid-user
</Files>

# password-protect a directory
resides
AuthType basic
AuthName “This directory is protected”
AuthUserFile /home/path/.htpasswd
AuthGroupFile /dev/null
Require valid-user

16. Redirect an old domain to a new domain – Using htaccess file you can redirect a old domain name to a new domain by adding the following code into the htaccess file. Basically what it does is it will remap the old domain to the new one.

# redirect from old domain to new domain
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yourdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

As htaccess files are very powerful, even a slightest syntax error can cause sever malfunction of your server. So it is crucial to take the backup copies of everything before you try the hacks and tricks on your hypertext access files. Post your thoughts with a comment.

while designing and developing a website a web designer need to several tools to maximizing the effectiveness of the website. There are a wide range of different tools which is been presented here. Each of these tools is so important for a web designer.

1. 
   Web Page Analyzer Tool – This tool can be used to test the loading time of your web page. It gives a detailed report on how many objects and size of the objects on the page. These tools have several rating for each object like Green ratings is for good, Yellow for caution and Red for warnings.
2. 
   W3C CSS Validation Services – This W3C CSS validation Service is a web based tool helps web designers to check Cascading Style Sheets(CSS) are validated. The CSS can be validated here by three ways one is typing the URL, second is by uploading the file and finally by inputting the direct CSS code in the input box.
3. 
   Browser compatibility testing tool – By using Browsershots you can test your web designed pages in different browsers. As we all know the importance of checking the web pages with different multiple browsers. Browser compatibility testing is a critical element in the web development practice.
4. 
   Website Wireframe Tool – Wireframes are a basic visual guide for any web page layout design. Wireframe also allows maintaining design consistency throughout the site. Wireframes are very important part in the initial stage of the design process. Gliffy is a free web-based diagram editor. Gliffy free wireframe software makes it easy to create website wireframes and to share web mockups with anyone.
5. 
   Web color picker - This color picker will help you fine tune the hex color codes for your web page. These color picker tools are great for exploring colors and color schemes for your web design project.
6. 
   Screen Resolutions Checker – Quickly and easily test any Website in various Screen Resolutions! This tool allows you to check any web page in different screen resolutions. As web visitors uses different screen resolutions web designers need to check their web page design in different screen resolutions and make sure it looks in all of them.
7. 
   Dummy Text Generator – A dummy text generator will come handy to any web designers because when they wait for the content. Web designers can use dummy text generators to fill up that space.
8. 
   CSS Menu Generator – will generate both the CSS and the HTML code required to produce a text-based yet appealing set of navigation buttons. Menu generator makes it easy to create custom CSS menus without having to know all the complicated HTML and CSS
9. 
   Broken Link checker – Use this tool to check for Broken Links on a website. Broken links are links that lead nowhere; Clicking on the link will show an error page.
10. 
    Browser size checker - A nifty online tool for setting your browser size while doingWeb design.
11. 
    Robot Control Code Generation Tool – The only reason you might need to use a robots.txt file is if you want to prevent someone else from using this search engine to index your site
12. 
    Http header checker - Check your server to make sure the proper HTTP Status Codes (200, 301, 302, 304, 307, 404, 410) are being returned in the server headers.
13. 
    URL rewriting tool - This tool helps you convert dynamic URLs into static looking html URLs.
14. 
    htaccess tool – These tools will create .htaccess and .htpasswd files for you, without having to build these manually.
15. 
    Rounded Corner and Gradient Generator - This generates a basic box with rounded corners. It will create four image files and the necessary HTML and CSS code for you to put rounded corners around your content.
16. 
    Strip Generator lets you make your own comic strips. Users can even create their own Strip Blog, which combines the art of creating comic strips with blogging.

I am not sure all of you might have heard of htaccess files. Also may be thinking what can be done having an htaccess file on your site. The people who would have heard would have used to implement custom error pages and for protecting directories which needs a password access. But htaccess file can do more than that. Below I have mentioned few quality tips on how to use .htaccess files for webmasters to their advantage.

1. For Password Protection – If you have a specific area or folder that needs to be protected and only certain people should have access to it. Then .htaccess is your answer. There are several client side based scripts to protect your password which is not secured but using server side htaccess you are safe.

2. Block users with their IP – If you think you need to deny access to certain IP address or blocks. You can also allow and deny by domain name rather than the IP address.

3. Block referrals sites – If you think certain sites is misusing your content or images and hot linking without a legitimate one then you can block them through htaccess. An apache mod rewrite is required to be installed on to the server first most servers have them.

4. 301 redirects – 301 redirect is the most effective and Search Engine Friendly method for redirecting a web page. It’s not a difficult task to implement it will preserve the ranking and credibility of that particular page.

5. 404 error pages creation – Everyone get frustrated when they encounter a broken link page. But you can help the users by creating a custom 404 error page and tell them that this pages doesn’t exist which will make the reader to think that you care them.

6. Prevents from access htaccess – htaccess files allow you to prevent accessing certain part of your website. htaccess also can protect certain directories as password protect folders and give access to only specific users.

7. Create user friendly URLs- With htaccess and an apache module called mod_rewrite you can setup URLS in which ever way you want. Often ecommerce and a website on content management software generate URL with many special characters which are not search engine friendly. But with .htaccess file you can mod_rewrite them.

8. Enabling server side includes- One of the trickiest aspects of a maintaining a website is constant update on a certain part of the design which occurs on every page. But with Enabling server side includes instead of copying and pasting the new code on all the pages you can use a include file which will modify and will replace all the pages. You should also be able to do that using .htaccess

9. Set time zone of your server- You can set server time zone to local time zone using htaccess which will give the correct time being return in your web form.

10. Block bots and Cache of the web pages- Another advantage of htaccess is for blocking bots and caching of your web page by the search engines. This can be prevented too by htaccess.

htaccess is one of the smallest things that we all overlook. but I see many things I have listed here are very invaluable tool for a webmaster.