Mysterious .htaccess file

[Smith6612]

Has anyone noticed within the last few days in their cPanel logs, the changing/creation of a .htaccess file in the public_html folder of their sites for those who didn't have one? I noticed one that cPanel had logged for my site. I did delete it since I didn't seem to need it as my site had been running just fine with and without it.

 

[zubair12]

yea i am also noticing that!!!

 

[7thskye]

on the other hand (related to .htaccess file, but unrelated to the problem experienced above), the .htaccess file doesn't show up in the file manager. I'm away from my own laptop, so I'm stuck using the file manager instead of ftp... anyway to fix the problem?

 

[garrettroyce]

You need to select the option to show hidden (dot) files. I believe this option shows up when initially open the file manager.

 

[omniuni]

Please, do NOT delete .htaccess! This file contains information for who is allowed to access that folder, and how it is presented online! The server will most likely recreate that file whenever it is accessed certain ways. .htaccess can also be very powerful, allowing you to rewrite URL's, and change how files are parsed in that directory. (For example, you can make .html's be parsed as PHP with that file.)

The "." at the beginning of the file name is now Linux and Unix systems designate "hidden" files. Windows does not understand this, since it doesn't really use hidden files for much. Hidden files on a Linux system are usually configuration files, and this is the case for .htaccess. The file manager will most likely not show dot-files (or hidden files) because of exactly that reason: they are hidden files, as garrettroyce said above.