Use of This htaccess tutorial step by step Guide. This tutorial was created to serve as a complete resource for using the .htaccess file on a web server. If you are not new to using .htaccess, we recommend starting with the first chapter “.htaccess Basics” here. What is .htaccess? Welcome to our htaccess tutorial . .htaccess is a very old configuration file that controls the web server running your website and is one of the most important configuration files you will find. .htaccess files work at the directory level, allowing them to override the global configuration options for the .htaccess directives located at the top of the directory tree. .htaccess can control access / settings for Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) through password protection , 301 redirects , rewrites , and more.