Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. On-Page Optimization
    4. "translation" of code in htaccess file

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    "translation" of code in htaccess file

    On-Page Optimization
    3
    4
    851
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • momof4
      momof4 last edited by

      Hi everyone!

      I am a newbie to the whole SEO and html thing and I am trying to get a better understanding of the "behind the scenes" part of my website. I hope I can find someone here who can translate a piece of code for me that I have in my htaccess file:

      Options -Multiviews
      Options +FollowSymLinks
      rewritecond $1 !^(index.php|public|tmp|robots.txt|template.html|favicon.ico|images|css|uploads)
      rewritecond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
      rewritecond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
      rewriterule ^(.*)$ index.php?link=$1 [NC,L,QSA]

      I know that something is getting redirected to the index file, but what (or when) exactly? Does the word "robots"mean that search engine crawlers are getting redirected here? And is this good or bad (in terms of  SEO)? Or is this redirecting people who try to get to my robots/ template or image files??

      Thanks in advance for any answers!

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • momof4
        momof4 @LynnPatchett last edited by

        Hi lynnp!

        Thanks for explaining! That was very helpful.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • LynnPatchett
          LynnPatchett last edited by

          It should be redirecting to index.php as long as a number of conditions are met:

          rewritecond $1 !^(index.php|public|tmp|robots.txt|template.html|favicon.ico|images|css|uploads)
          As long as the requested url does not start with one of: index.php, public, tmp, robots.txt, template.html, favicon.ico, imagesloss, uploads and,

          rewritecond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
          rewritecond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
          As long as the requested url is not an existing file or directory

          Then:
          rewriterule ^(.*)$ index.php?link=$1 [NC,L,QSA]
          Rewrite the url to index.php?link=REQUESTED-URL (along with any other url variables) and stop processing

          So you should be seeing urls something like index.php?link=page.php or similar if the conditions above are met.
          robots.txt is not being redirected since it is being specifically excluded in the first line.

          Think I got that right, hope it makes sense!

          momof4 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • Martijn_Scheijbeler
            Martijn_Scheijbeler last edited by

            As far as I can tell from checking this snippet it is NOT redirecting traffic to your index.php file and public/tmp/ and a couple of more directories. I'm not that familiar with Apache environments, somehow more Nginx so I can't help you with the other three lines.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • 1 / 1
            • First post
              Last post

            Got a burning SEO question?

            Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


            Start my free trial


            Browse Questions

            Explore more categories

            • Moz Tools

              Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

            • SEO Tactics

              Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

            • Community

              Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

            • Digital Marketing

              Chat about tactics outside of SEO

            • Research & Trends

              Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

            • Support

              Connect on product support and feature requests.

            • See all categories

            Related Questions

            • CopBlaster.com

              Will Google Count Links Loaded from JavaScript Files After the Page Loads

              Hi, I have a simple question. If I want to put an image with a link to another site like a banner ad on my page, but do not want it counted by Google. Can I simply load the link and banner using jQuery onload from a separate .js file? The ideal result would be for Google to index a script tag instead of a link.

              On-Page Optimization | | CopBlaster.com
              1
            • leadforms

              301 Redirects - Large .htaccess file question

              We are moving about 5000 pages from root into different folders. We need to individually 301 each page because the are sitting at root level now: mysite.com/page.com We want to move them to: mysite.com/folder/page.html etc I dont think redirect match can works because of the different files names and folders they are being moved in to. Will 5000 entries in .htacess slow site loading? Any other suggestions how to handle?

              On-Page Optimization | | leadforms
              0
            • Robotnik

              Using a dash or underscores in file names.

              Is it better to use a dash or an underscore in file names to improve SEO? EX memory_flash.jpg or memory-flash.jpg Or does it make no difference?

              On-Page Optimization | | Robotnik
              0
            • bizzer

              In counting words for a "long article," do comments count in the word count?

              As Moz and others have proven, long articles help ranking, linking and sharing.  My question is, do the comments at the end of an article count in the word count as Google counts it.

              On-Page Optimization | | bizzer
              0
            • JohnHuynh

              Need I add rel="dofollow" or not?

              Hello, My website is http://www.vietnamvisacorp.com is using the href links without meta tag rel="dofollow" such as I am using . Should I put ref="dofollow" in this:  Thank you!

              On-Page Optimization | | JohnHuynh
              0
            • lbohen

              Does Commented HTML Code Get Spidered?

              I have a change, perhaps temporary, to my web store that I will be making. I am wondering if the code that I will comment out () gets spidered?

              On-Page Optimization | | lbohen
              0
            • inhouseninja

              SEO value of "in the news" links on home page?

              Notice more sites have an "in the News" section on the home page, or something similar like press releases... Apart from providing users fresh content, is there an SEO value to this?  What is the explanation for this? Have a feeling the answer is obvious but just not too sure Thanks a lot.

              On-Page Optimization | | inhouseninja
              0
            • smaavie

              Avoiding "Duplicate Page Title" and "Duplicate Page Content" - Best Practices?

              We have a website with a searchable database of recipes. You can search the database using an online form with dropdown options for: Course (starter, main, salad, etc)
              Cooking Method (fry, bake, boil, steam, etc)
              Preparation Time (Under 30 min, 30min to 1 hour, Over 1 hour) Here are some examples of how URLs may look when searching for a recipe: find-a-recipe.php?course=starter
              find-a-recipe.php?course=main&preperation-time=30min+to+1+hour
              find-a-recipe.php?cooking-method=fry&preperation-time=over+1+hour There is also pagination of search results, so the URL could also have the variable "start", e.g. find-a-recipe.php?course=salad&start=30 There can be any combination of these variables, meaning there are hundreds of possible search results URL variations. This all works well on the site, however it gives multiple "Duplicate Page Title" and "Duplicate Page Content" errors when crawled by SEOmoz. I've seached online and found several possible solutions for this, such as: Setting canonical tag Adding these URL variables to Google Webmasters to tell Google to ignore them Change the Title tag in the head dynamically based on what URL variables are present However I am not sure which of these would be best. As far as I can tell the canonical tag should be used when you have the same page available at two seperate URLs, but this isn't the case here as the search results are always different. Adding these URL variables to Google webmasters won't fix the problem in other search engines, and will presumably continue to get these errors in our SEOmoz crawl reports. Changing the title tag each time can lead to very long title tags, and it doesn't address the problem of duplicate page content. I had hoped there would be a standard solution for problems like this, as I imagine others will have come across this before, but I cannot find the ideal solution. Any help would be much appreciated. Kind Regards

              On-Page Optimization | | smaavie
              5

            Get started with Moz Pro!

            Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

            Start my free trial
            Products
            • Moz Pro
            • Moz Local
            • Moz API
            • Moz Data
            • STAT
            • Product Updates
            Moz Solutions
            • SMB Solutions
            • Agency Solutions
            • Enterprise Solutions
            • Digital Marketers
            Free SEO Tools
            • Domain Authority Checker
            • Link Explorer
            • Keyword Explorer
            • Competitive Research
            • Brand Authority Checker
            • Local Citation Checker
            • MozBar Extension
            • MozCast
            Resources
            • Blog
            • SEO Learning Center
            • Help Hub
            • Beginner's Guide to SEO
            • How-to Guides
            • Moz Academy
            • API Docs
            About Moz
            • About
            • Team
            • Careers
            • Contact
            Why Moz
            • Case Studies
            • Testimonials
            Get Involved
            • Become an Affiliate
            • MozCon
            • Webinars
            • Practical Marketer Series
            • MozPod
            Connect with us

            Contact the Help team

            Join our newsletter
            Moz logo
            © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
            • Accessibility
            • Terms of Use
            • Privacy

            Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.