Thread

Firstly where do I place robots.txt in an EE installation? I assume in the root alongside the topmost index.php (I have both 1.6 and 2.0 to set up).

Second, do I need to bother about .htaccess? If so are there any examples?

Are these any EE best practices for either of these?

Yes, a robot.txt would go in the domain’s root, just as if there were no EE. No, you don’t have to bother about .htaccess. If you do, be sure to take a look at this Wiki entry—and do bear in mind that it’s not officially supported.

Second, do I need to bother about .htaccess? If so are there any examples?

.htaccess can have many functions, so it depends on your needs. For any new site I start with basics:

DirectoryIndex index.php index.html
RewriteEngine On
ReWriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^mysite.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ <a href="http://mysite.com/$1">http://mysite.com/$1</a> [R=301,L]

That sets up a default to the index.php file first, and redirects any http://www.mysite.com to plain old mysite.com (Google doesn’t really like both, unless content is different).

.htaccess does a lot more, though, and is needed to remove index.php from the URL string.

Thanks, grrramps. Going ahead and shifting this thread over to How-to.