Is the size of an .htaccess file important for server speed?

[Visit Thailand]

My .htaccess file is 14 KB - It has mainly a lot of 301 redirects in.

Would this affect the server speed or anything else ?

[Air]

The .htaccess file is read on every request, therefore it will have some effect, but it is marginal. Nothing to worry about unless it starts to slow down page delivery (that may sound strange, but in the end it is the only true indicator that your .htaccess is too large or complex).

[Visit Thailand]

Thanks Air, so how many 301's would you deem too much ?

I must have around 100 - 200 now and add to it every day.

[Air]

>so how many 301's would you deem too much ?

Well my answer may seem a little tongue-in-cheek, but too much really is when you notice page views getting slow.

[PsychoTekk]

i think redirects are no problem.
the worst thing to happen would be a loop in the rewrite rules,
that can slow down delivery time really bad

[Visit Thailand]

Thank you.

Because some of my pages are in upper and lower case letters I have noticed that one or two bots turn upper case letters into lower. This causes a 404. Do you think it would be wise to redirect these errors, so that when bot x looks for mydomain.com/aurl.shtml it will be redirected to mydomain.com/AUrl.com for example ?

[PsychoTekk]

i think it would be best to rename your files
so that everything is in lower case.
think of platform compatibility!
...just my 2 cents though :)

[Visit Thailand]

I agree but I then would have to do 301s for the SE's and people linking in etc to point them to the newer lower case urls.

So I thought it may be easier as it seems to be only one bot (don't know which) to at least 301 all the major pages and keep the upper case urls as they are.

Would be interested in other peoples thoughts on this.