I am currently migrating my website from Apache to nginx, but my .htaccess file is not working. My website is inside the /usr/share/nginx/html/mywebsite folder. How can I use .htaccess in my nginx server?
This is my .htaccess file:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule video/watch/([a-zA-Z0-9_#$*-]+)/?$ "videos-single.php?id=$1" [NC]
Nginx doesn't support .htaccess (see here: "You can’t do this. You shouldn’t. If you need .htaccess, you’re probably doing it wrong.").
You've two choices (as I know):
import your .htaccess to nginx.conf (maybe the htaccess to nginx converter helps you)
use authd-htpasswd (I didn't try it)
Disclosure: I am the author of htaccess for nginx, which is now open source software.
Over the past years, I created a plugin which implements htaccess behaviour into nginx, especially things like RewriteRule, Allow and Deny, which can be crucial for web security. The plugin is used in my own productive environments without a problem.
I totally share the point of efficiency and speed in nginx, and why they didn't implement htaccess.
However, think about it. You cannot make it worse if you're using nginx plus htaccess. You still keep the great performance of nginx, plus you can drive your legacy appliances effortlessly on one webserver.
This is not supported officially in nginx. If you need this kind of functionality you will need to use Apache or some other http server which supports it.
That said, the official nginx reasoning is flawed because it conflates what users want to do with the way it is done. For example, nginx could easily check the directories only every 10 seconds / minute or so, or it could use inotify and similar mechanisms. This would avoid the need to check it on every request... But knowing that doesn't help you. :)
You could get around this limitation by writing a script that would wait for nginx config files to appear and then copy them to /etc/nginx/conf.d/. However there might be some security implications - as there is no native support for .htaccess in nginx, there is also no support for limiting allowed configuration directives in config files. YMMV.
Using the config file is one option, but the cool thing about the .htaccess file is that it provided a way for a web developer to have some control over server settings without having root access to the server. There doesn't seem to be anything like this on nginx which is a real bummer.
I understand how the way it's setup on apache slows down response times, but hoped there could be an nginx way to do the same thing without the performance hit... At least a way to do rewrites with regex on urls if nothing else.
"Is there no nginx way to do bulk redirects using regular expressions that doesn't slow down response times."
Just edit your database with myphpmyadmin.
Open myphpmyadmin select your database then find your "yourprefix_Posts" table.
Open it then click the "Search" tab, then "Find and Replace".
Select "post_content" in the dropdown
In the "Find" field, type URL you want to change: "website.com/oldURL".
In the "Replace" field, type the new URL: "website.com/newURL".
(To use regular expression, tick the "Regular Expression" box.)
NOTE: You can test this out by simply leaving the "Replace" field blank.
ALWAYS BACKUP database before making changes. This might sound scary but its really not. Its super simple and can be used to quickly replace just about anbything.
Related
I am currently hosting the contents of a site with ProviderA. I have a domain registered with ProviderB. I want users to access the contents (www.providerA.com/sub/content) by visiting www.providerB.com. A domain forward is easy enough and works as intended, however, unless I embed the site in a frame (which is a big no-no), the actual URL reads www.providerA.com/sub/content despite the user inputting www.providerB.com.
I really need a solution for this. A domain masking without the use of a frame. I'm sure this has been done before. An .htaccess domain rewrite?
Your help would be hugely appreciated! I'm going nuts trying to find a solution.
For Apache
Usual way: setup mod_proxy. The apache on providerB becomes a client to providerA's apache. It gets the content and sends it back to the client.
But looks like you only have .htaccess. So no proxy, you need full configuration access for that.
So you cannot, see: How to set up proxy in .htaccess
If you have PHP on providerB
Setup a proxy written in PHP. All requests to providerB are intercepted by that PHP proxy. It gets the content from providerA and sends it back. So it does the same thing as the Apache module. However, depending on the quality of the implementation, it might fail on some requests, types, sizes, timeouts, ...
Search for "php proxy" on the web, you will see a couple available on GitHub and others. YMMV as to how difficult it is to setup, and the reliability.
No PHP but some other server side language
Obviously that could be done in another language, I checked PHP because that is what I use the most.
The best solution would be to transfer the content to providerB :-)
I want to know if my Apache server uses .htaccess files or not. If it uses them, then why and how?
How can I know if my Apache server is using .htaccess or not?
Thank you.
As for why, it's a convenient way for shared-hosting providers to give some access to users who would like to set some configuration options. You obviously wouldn't want everyone to have access to the main configuration file for security purposes. It's also useful for development purposes since you can set different options for different directories.
As for how Apache uses the file, I recommend reading the documentation.
As for how to know if Apache is using .htaccess files, it most likely is. I've yet to meet a shared hosting provider that doesn't. And if you are running your own server, I assume you would know how you set it up. Worst case scenario, you could follow this advice from the docs:
A good test for this is to put garbage in your .htaccess file and reload the page. If a server error is not generated, then you almost certainly have AllowOverride None in effect.
I have the following URL format:
www.example.com/members/admin/projects/?projectid=41
And I would like to rewrite them to the following format:
www.example.com/avits/projectname/
Project names do not have to be unique when a user creates them therefore I will be checking for an existing name and appending an integer to the end of the project name if a project of the same name already exists. e.g. example.project, example.project1, example.project2 etc.
I am happy setting up the GET request to query the database by project name however I am having huge problems setting up these pretty url's.
I am using Apache with Nginx Admin installed which mens that all static content is served via Nginx without the overhead of apache.
I am totally confused as to whether I should be employing an nginx rewrite rule in my nginx.conf file or standard rewrites in my .htaccess file.
To confuse matters further although this is a rather large custom appliction it is build on top of a wordpress backbone for easy blogging functionality meaning that I also have the built in wordpress rewrite module at my disposal.
I have tried all three methods with absolutely no success. I have read a lot on the matter but simply cannot seem to get anything to work. I am certain this is purely down to a complete lack of understanding on with regards to URL rewriting. Combined with the fact that I don't know which type of rewriting should be applicable in my case means that I am doing nothing more than going round in circles.
Can anyone clear up this matter for me and explain how to rewrite my URLs in the manner described above?
Many thanks.
If you are proxying all the non static file requests to Apache, do the rewrites there - you don't need to do anything on nginx as it will just pass the requests to the back end.
The problem with what you are proposing is that it's not actually a rewrite, a rewrite is taking the first URL and just changing it around or moving the user to another location.
What you need actually takes logic to extrapolate the project name from the project ID.
For example you can rewrite:
www.example.com/members/admin/projects/?projectid=41
To:
www.example.com/avits/41/
Fairly easily, but can you map that /41/ in your app code to change it to /projectname/ - because a URL rewrite can't do that.
I google on the net and found two approaches to redirect incoming requests to apache in Ubuntu OS: 1) using httpd.conf and 2) using .htaccess.
I am confused. What are the differences between them?
Please share if you know how.
Thank you!
The .htaccess-file is meant to be used on shared servers where you don't have access to the primary Apache config files. It is generally a better idea to use httpd.conf or your site config rather than .htaccess if you can as this has a lower processing overhead (as far as I know, the .htaccess-file is parsed on each request), but both ways work fine.
How can a client detect if a server is using mod_rewrite? Now I know that some mod_rewrite rules are not very obvious. But some are, such as "SEO Friendly Urls". What types of behavior is impossible unless a server is running mod_rewrite?
What types of behavior is impossible unless a server is running mod_rewrite?
The real answer is "none". In theory, any URL could be formed by actual files or directories, including the classical "SEO friendly" URLs.
There is only circumstantial evidence:
The best indication that I can think of is when the entire site structure consists of URLs without .htm .php .html file extensions:
http://domain.com/slugs/house-warming-party
to exclude the possibility of that URL being a directory, request
http://domain.com/slugs/house-warming-party/index.htm
http://domain.com/slugs/house-warming-party/index.html
http://domain.com/slugs/house-warming-party/index.php
http://domain.com/slugs/house-warming-party/index.asp
... whatever other extensions there are .....
if those requests all fail, it is very likely that the site is using mod_rewrite. However if they succeed, as #Gumbo says, it could also be the MultiViews option fixing the request. Either way, this is nowhere near safe!
Depending on what your use case is, you could also try to deduct things from the CMS used on the site. Wordpress with mod_rewrite turned on will show a different URL structure than with it turned off. The same holds true for most other CMSes. But of course, this is also a highly imperfect approach.
The use of HTML resources with a .html/.htm/.php ending would point slightly against the use of mod_rewrite, but you can never be sure.
The use of the PATHINFO variable (also known as poor man's mod_rewrite) would point somewhat strongly against the use of mod_rewrite:
http://example.com/index.php/slugs/house-warming-party
In conclusion, mod_rewrite (like most URL-rewriting tools) is supposed to be a module transparent to the outside world. I know of no sure-fire way to detect it from outside, and there may well be none.