Simply put, they are invisible plain text files where one can store server directives. Server directives are anything you might put in an Apache config file (httpd.conf) or even a php ini file (php.ini), but unlike those "master" directive files, these .htaccess directives apply only to the folder in which the .htaccess file resides, and all the folders inside.
This ability to plant .htaccess files in any directory of our site allows us to set up a finely-grained tree of server directives, each subfolder inheriting properties from its parent, whilst at the same time adding to, or over-riding certain directives with its own .htaccess file. For instance, you could use .htacces to enable indexes all over your site, and then deny indexing in only certain subdirectories, or deny index listings site-wide, and allow indexing in certain subdirectories. One line in the .htaccess file in your root and your whole site is altered.
There's a small performance penalty for all this .htaccess file checking, but not noticable, and you'll find most of the time it's just on and there's nothing you can do about it anyway, so let's make the most of it..
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