.htaccess and commercial servers

Looking for my "root"

[epanastatis]

My domain is hosted by a commercial service (Earthlink). They have it set up so that all of my pages are in a folder called "webdocs". My question is, if I want to code an .htaccess file to control access to my site, is it sufficient for me to just upload it to this "webdocs" folder, or do I need go up a level? And if I do this without consulting with Earthlink customer service (who, to my taste, are too slow) first, is there any chance that this would interfere with the overall functioning of the site.

[marcs]

Upload it to the same directory that holds your home page. This .htaccess file when then affect your entire site.

A .htaccess file can indeed cause a web site to not function as expected. In that case, remove the invalid .htaccess file, correct it and upload it again.

[epanastatis]

marcs,

Thanks for the advice. I'm having a problem, however. When I uploaded .htaccess I immediately started getting 500 errors when trying access my site.

What I had intended to was redirect 404s to a custom page, and to ban the Internetseer bot from the page. Without access to the Apache error logs, I can't tell what I did wrong or if there's something higher up on the server interfering with this.

Here's what I wrote:

ErrorDocument 404 /404.html
RewriteEngine On 
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^InternetSeer.com [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^sitecheck.internetseer.com
RewriteRule ^.* - [F]

Any ideas?

[jdMorgan]

epanastatis,

The code looks OK.

I can think of two possibilities:
1) You need to add "Options +FollowSymLinks" on a new line before "RewriteEngine on" -or-
2) You are not allowed to use mod_rewrite on Earthlink.

You might be able to use mod_access to ban internetseer - it might work even if mod_rewrite is not allowed.

SetEnvIf User-Agent [Ii]nternet[Ss]eer\.com getout
<Files *>
Deny from getout
</Files>

Jim

[epanastatis]

Thanks, jdMorgan! I tried your first suggestion and still got the 500 error, so I'm leaning toward the thesis that Earthlink doesn't allow mod_rewrite (though as expected they haven't answered my question about that...) I'm testing your second suggestion, and it hasn't had any negative repercussions, but it'll take me a couple days to see if it's successfully repulsing Internetseer.

As usual, WebmasterWorld has proven to be very valuable.

[closed]

it'll take me a couple days to see if it's successfully repulsing Internetseer

Or you could just use Wannabrowser and see right now. :)