Edit your .HTAccess the Easy Way

There is a cute wee plugin to enable you to edit your .HTAccess file right from within WordPress. There are several plugins available to configure different things within the .HTAccess file, but this is the ONLY plug-in that I'm aware of that will allow me to manually edit the configuration with full flexibility:

NOTE:

Because it's yet Another plug-in, I only install it long enough to make the changes I wish and then I uninstall it and delete the files again. Yep, it's just temporary!

So, once this is installed, you can go to your WordPress Dashboard

Scroll down a bit and within your left margin, you'll see how to access it:

Also, notice that "Backup" option. You can use to this to generate a backup file on your server. (The WA servers) that you can access later. I do this, but also manually back it up which I'll show you in just a moment.

But, here's the main .HTAccess Editor screen. Of course yours will differ as I already have other things configured and mine is a bit long:

Once I'm in the .HTAccess file as shown above, I'll first open a Text editor on my computer such as Notepad

Note: Don't use MS Word or WordPad as it will insert hidden HTML code that will mess it up. Notepad strips these out.

So, I'll do a Select ALL

Then, Copy andPaste intoNotepad

Then, within Notepad, File and SAVE.

So then, I have TWO backups of the .HTAccess configuration file. One on the server and one on my local computer.

You can even edit the file within Notepad, then Select All again and copy and paste back into the WordPress .HTAccess File Editor. The choice is yours.