.htaccess goodness from: http://net.tutsplus.com/articles/news/htaccess-files-for-the-rest-of-us/

.htaccess

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# .htaccess Files for the Rest of Us
# http://net.tutsplus.com/articles/news/htaccess-files-for-the-rest-of-us/
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# Redirections #

# Redirect to new location
# Redirect 301 ^old\.html$ http://localhost/new.html

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# Rewrites #

# RewriteEngine on
# RewriteRule ^old\.html$ new.html

# In order to update what is displayed in the address bar of the visitor's browser, 
# we can use the R flag at the end of the RewriteRule e.g.
#
# RewriteRule ^old\.html$ http://hostname/new.html [r=301]

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# Serving Custom Error Pages #

# ErrorDocument 404 "/404.html"

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# Restricting Access to Specific Resources #

# AuthName "Username and password required"
# AuthUserFile /path/to/.htpasswd
# Require valid-user
# AuthType Basic

# To protect a specific file, we can wrap the above code 
# in a <files> directive, which specifies the protected file:
#
# <Files "protectedfile.html">
#    AuthName "Username and password required"
#    AuthUserFile /path/to/.htpasswd
#    Require valid-user
#     AuthType Basic
# </Files>

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# Block Access to Certain Entities #

# Block IP address:
#
# order allow,deny
# deny from 192.168.0.1
# allow from all

# To deny requests based on user-agent, we could do this:
#
# RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^OrangeSpider
# RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://%{REMOTE_ADDR}/$ [r=301,l]

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# Force an IE Rendering Mode #

# For example, we can use the mod_headers module, if it is present, to set the X-UA-Compatible header:
#
# Header set X-UA-Compatible "IE=Edge"

# We can also avoid setting this header on files that 
# don't require it by using a <FilesMatch directive like so:
#
# <FilesMatch "\.(js|css|gif|png|jpe?g|pdf|xml|oga|ogg|m4a|ogv|mp4|m4v|webm|svg|svgz|eot|ttf|otf|woff|ico|webp|appcache|manifest|htc|crx|xpi|safariextz|vcf)$" >
#      Header unset X-UA-Compatible
# </FilesMatch>

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# Implement Caching #

# If you're running your site through Google PageSpeed or Yahoo's YSlow 
# and you get the message about setting far-future expiry headers, 
# this is how you fix it:
#
# ExpiresActive on
# ExpiresByType image/gif                 "access plus 1 month"
# ExpiresByType image/png                 "access plus 1 month"
# ExpiresByType image/jpg                 "access plus 1 month"
# ExpiresByType image/jpeg                "access plus 1 month"
# ExpiresByType video/ogg                 "access plus 1 month"
# ExpiresByType audio/ogg                 "access plus 1 month"
# ExpiresByType video/mp4                 "access plus 1 month"
# ExpiresByType video/webm                "access plus 1 month"

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# Enabling Compression #

# This compression scheme works on newer versions of Apache (2.1+) using the mod_filter module
# 
# <IfModule mod_filter>
#   FilterDeclare   COMPRESS
#   FilterProvider  COMPRESS  DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $text/html
#   FilterProvider  COMPRESS  DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $text/css
#   FilterProvider  COMPRESS  DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $text/javascript
#   FilterChain     COMPRESS
#   FilterProtocol  COMPRESS  DEFLATE change=yes;byteranges=no
# </IfModule>
#
# On older versions of Apache, the mod_deflate module is used to configure DEFLATE compression. 
# 
# <IfModule mod_deflate>
#   SetOutputFilter DEFLATE
#   AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/css text/javascript
# </IfModule>

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