What are best practices for using and editing htaccess files? I have searched the support pages and forums and can’t find the answers to these questions. I am very experienced with webmastering/http/apache/htaccess, but new to DreamHost.
I turned on password restrictions via “Htaccess/WebDAV” for one of my sites and a .htaccess file was created. The file reads “Generated by Dreamhost. DO NOT modify!!!”
Q1) Does this mean it will get overwritten regularly without warning, or only when I make additional changes from the Htaccess/WebDAV interface?
Q2) Is manual editing the only way to add other directives such as “Options -Indexes”?
Q3) If I add directives manually, will I no longer be able to use the Htaccess/WebDAV interface to add users, and must I do every change manually from then on? I tried this and it did not seem to preserve my changes (hence the “DO NOT modify” apparently!).
Q4) Are there any other recommendations that people would make? How do you manage things like custom changes with things the DH interface does like password control?
Thanks!