---
title: "Examples of .htaccess rewrite rules"
canonical_url: "https://www.zone.lv/help/kb/examples-of-htaccess-rewrite-rules/"
post_type: "ht_kb"
published: "2021-01-28T11:09:50+00:00"
modified: "2025-04-08T11:52:19+00:00"
language: "en"
author: "Ardi Jürgens"
taxonomies:
  ht_kb_category:
    - name: "Technical"
      url: "https://www.zone.lv/help/kb-categories/technical-en/"
  ht_kb_tag:
    - name: "htaccess"
      url: "https://www.zone.lv/help/kb-tags/htaccess/"
    - name: "rewrite"
      url: "https://www.zone.lv/help/kb-tags/rewrite-en/"
    - name: "technical"
      url: "https://www.zone.lv/help/kb-tags/technical/"
---

# Examples of .htaccess rewrite rules

## **Enable directory indexes**

```
Options +Indexes
```

## **Blocking certain IP-addresses**

```
<RequireAll>
    Require all granted
    Require not ip 1.2.3.4
    Require not ip 12.34.56.78
</RequireAll>

```

## **Allowing queries from one certain IP-address**

```
Require ip 1.2.3.4
```

## **Blocking a certain USER\_AGENT (for example a bad Bot)**

```
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} BadBot
RewriteRule .* - [F]
```

## **Blocking several USER\_AGENTs**

```
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} BadBot [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} EvilScanner [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Fake
RewriteRule .* - [F]
```

## **Deny access to a certain file**

```
<Files "denied.php">
    Order Allow,Deny
    Deny from all
</Files>

```

## **Basic redirection**

```
# Redirecting the main domain
Redirect 301 / https://www.example.ee/

# Redirecting an expired link
Redirect 301 /expired-page https://www.example.ee/new-page
```

## **Redirecting all queries to one domain**

```
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www\.)?example\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://example.com%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]
```

## **Redirecting a domain without www to a domain with www**

```
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example\.ee$ [NC]
RewriteRule (.*) https://www.example.ee/$1 [NC,R=301,L]
```

or:

```
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\. [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [NC,R=301,L]
```

## **Redirecting a domain with www to a domain without www**

```
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.example\.ee$ [NC]
RewriteRule (.*) https://example.ee/$1 [NC,R=301,L]
```

or:

```
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.(.*)$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://%1%{REQUEST_URI} [NC,R=301,L]
```

## Allowing certain resources (fonts, svg, css and js files) from a domain other than the server’s domain (Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS))

```
<IfModule mod_headers.c>
    <FilesMatch "\.(ttf|ttc|otf|eot|woff|woff2|svg|font.css|css|js)$">
        Header set Access-Control-Allow-Origin "https://www.example.ee"
    </FilesMatch>
</IfModule>

```

## **HSTS, Content Security Policy and other security-related headers**

```
<IfModule mod_headers.c>
    Header set Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=31536000;includeSubDomains;preload" env=HTTPS

    Header set X-Frame-Options "DENY"
    Header set Content-Security-Policy "default-src https:; script-src https: 'unsafe-inline'; style-src https:'unsafe-inline'"
    Header set X-XSS-Protection "1; mode=block"
    Header set X-Content-Type-Options nosniff
</IfModule>
```

## **Allowing queries only from Estonian IP-addresses**

```
order deny,allow
deny from all
allow from env=DZSP_IS_ESTONIAN_IP
```

## **Allowing access only from countries of the European Union**

```
SetEnvIf MM_COUNTRY_CODE ^(AT|BE|BG|CZ|CY|DE|DK|EE|EL|ES|FI|FR|HR|HU|IE|IT|LT|LU|LV|MT|NL|PL|PT|RO|SE|SI|SK) EUROPEANUNION
order deny,allow
deny from all
allow from env=EUROPEANUNION
```

## **Blocking a certain country, e.g. China (CN)**

```
SetEnvIf MM_COUNTRY_CODE ^(CN) BlockedCountry
Deny from env=BlockedCountry
```

## **Blocking POST requests from list of countries**

```
# If country code (ISO 3166 format) for IP address matches,
# then define environment variable BLOCKED_COUNTRIES
SetEnvIf MM_COUNTRY_CODE ^(CN|HK|KP|KH|IN|VN|ID|PK|NP|BD|MA|NE|KE|EG|ET|SO|IR|IQ|RU|BY|RO|BR|CO|VE)$ BLOCKED_COUNTRIES

# When request method's type is POST and
# environment variable BLOCKED_COUNTRIES is defined
# then block the request.
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} POST
    RewriteCond %{ENV:BLOCKED_COUNTRIES} =1
    RewriteRule .* – [F,L]
</IfModule>

```

## **Redirecting users from a certain country (Finland) to another domain**

```
SetEnvIf MM_COUNTRY_CODE ^(FI) FINLAND
RewriteCond %{ENV:FINLAND} ^1$
RewriteRule .* http://www.example.fi%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]
```

Our servers use the GeoLite2 database which is created by MaxMind and which can be downloaded at <https://www.maxmind.com>.

## **Maintenance mode – temporarily redirect all queries to the maintenance notification page**

```
# If necessary, add certain URLs that must go through first before RewriteRule
# Add your network's IP-address
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/maintenance.html [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/maintenance\.css [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/maintenance\.jpg [NC]
RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} !90\.100\.100\.100
RewriteRule .* https://example.ee/maintenance.html [L]
```

## **Disabling the execution of PHP in order to prevent security issues**

```
Options -ExecCGI
RemoveType .php .php3 .phtml .inc
RemoveHandler .php .php3 .phtml .inc

<FilesMatch "\.(?i:php|php3|phtml|inc)$">
    Require all denied
</FilesMatch>

<IfModule mod_php7.c>
    php_flag engine off
</IfModule>

```

## **Using a rewrite proxy**

For example, displaying the contents of the subdirectory example.com/proxy/ on the main domain example.com

```
RewriteRule "^proxy/(.*)$" "http://www.example.com/$1" [P,L]

```

NB! Proxy requests can only be made for HTTP connections and a notification about each query will be added to the web server error log.