htaccess tweaks for speed and security

[sookaman]

Can anyone provide htaccess tweaks that can help with the speed and security of a website? As I do not know enough about this, I really don't want to change anything a break the website. I thought there may be a large "master" snippet that can do it all as a copy and paste thing.

Please note that I use W3 Total Cache plugin which is supposed to dump in some of the info required for this.

[lucy24]

I thought there may be a large "master" snippet that can do it all as a copy and paste thing.

The words "copy and paste" and "htaccess" really don't belong in the same paragraph. You have to code for your specific site's needs. How the pages are built, what pattern of visits you get, and so on. Speed and security may go together-- or you may have to choose one or the other in any given situation. It all depends.

As I do not know enough about this, I really don't want to change anything a break the website.

This is a wise way of looking at it.

The word "plugin" implies that you're using some standard CMS. Start by looking at their own offerings.

[tangor]

Define your CMS first (as lucy24 noted) for it's own internal security and speed. .htaccess will not help you in that regard. Anything that requires js will be slower than a static page.

[whitespace]

I use W3 Total Cache plugin...

I believe this implies WordPress?

[lucy24]

Turns out there's a parallel thread [webmasterworld.com] in the WP subforum.