Site Management Tools: Look Before You Leap! The danger of using Index Manager and other .htaccess altering tools..

[blogmaster 0]

A few minutes ago I was looking at site management tools section in my Control Panel. The tool "Index Manager" caught my eye. If I used it, then I wouldn't need to create placeholder pages in my folders with no index pages What I had forgotten is that I already had an .htaccess file in my site. Needless to say, enabling this option took down my whole site instantly and displayed an "Internal Server Error" message. How stupid of me! Upon inspection of my .htaccess file, I noticed that the tool had added the relevent command in the same line with my last command (and not leaving any space between my last word and it's first!) causing the commands to clash.So if you are thinking of using any of these tools and you suspect that it may alter your .htaccess file I suggest you get the relevent code first and place it yourself in the .htaccess file, or remove all your code and place it after the tool has written to it or you may consider leaving some blank lines after your last line of code.Having said that, I hope you won't make the same stupid mistake I just did

Edited September 19, 2007 by blogmaster (see edit history)

[DeM0nFiRe 0]

Ha ha, what bad luck! :PWell, thanks for letting us know about that. it's a good thing to know!WAy to take one for the team XD

[jlhaslip 4]

It is for that very reason that you are recommended to leave a single blank line at the bottom of the .htaccess file on an Apache server.I'll bet it would work to do this if you have the blank trailing line.

[blogmaster 0]

Ha ha, what bad luck!

You can say that again. I hope I haven't lost a few of my loyal traffic in the process

It is for that very reason that you are recommended to leave a single blank lne at the bottom of the .htaccess file on an Apache server.

I'm sure it would. You see jlhaslip, I wasn't even aware of this recommendation. Now it's the last thing I will forget!
Oh, and thanks for confirming my observation

or you may consider leaving some blank lines after your last line of code.

When I wrote that, I figured it should work but I hadn't tested it.