Creating an .htaccess file on your DreamHost web server
View the following article for instructions on how to create an .htaccess file on your web server:
If the file already exists, view the following articles for instructions on how to update it (depending on if you're using an FTP client or SSH):
What are http headers?
HTTP headers are part of an HTTP request and response. They define the operating parameters of an HTTP transaction. View the following link for further details.
You can use an .htaccess file to adjust or add headers to your HTTP response headers.
Adding a content-type=UTF-8 header
Use either one of the following in an .htaccess file to force the specific content-type header. A charset header specifies the character encoding of the document. This adds the header without having to use a meta tag:
AddDefaultCharset UTF-8 AddDefaultCharset ISO-8859-1
Adding a language header
Use the following in an .htaccess file to specify a language header. This adds the header without having to use a meta tag:
DefaultLanguage en-us
Cache-Control headers
One of the most common headers to add to a page is Cache-Control. This defines the amount of time a file should be cached.
For example, if the Cache-Control header is set to 5 minutes, a browser will download the file and cache it for five minutes. After 5 minutes has expired, the file will have to be retrieved again from the server.
Example
This example allows any visitor to cache the page for 5 minutes.
Header set Cache-Control "max-age=300, public"
Syntax
max-age is set in seconds.
The caching directive is next. It can be 'public', 'private', or 'no-store'. Most often, you want to keep this as 'public' so it applies to all visitors.
Using the 'Vary' HTTP header for mobile sites
View the following link from Google that explains in detail how to use the 'Vary' header for a mobile site:
Security
Content-Security-Policy
The Content-Security-Policy header helps reduce XSS risks. View the following page for further details:
Strict-Transport-Security (HSTS)
Tells browsers to ONLY interact with the site using HTTPS and never HTTP. View the following pages for further details.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Strict_Transport_Security
- https://www.owasp.org/index.php/HTTP_Strict_Transport_Security_Cheat_Sheet
You can enable this in your .htaccess file with the following code:
Header add Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=31536000;includeSubDomains;"
You can then test if it's active by running the following curl command:
[server]$ curl -I https://example.com HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Tue, 05 Jun 2018 20:05:52 GMT Server: Apache Last-Modified: Tue, 05 Jun 2018 16:26:52 GMT ETag: "2f9-56de78493cbc8" Accept-Ranges: bytes Content-Length: 761 Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=31415926;includeSubDomains; Content-Type: text/html
You should see the 'Strict-Transport-Security' header in the response.
hsts preload and Cloudflare
Chrome offers you the option to add your domain to their HSTS preload list.
If you have enabled Cloudflare in the DreamHost panel, it forces you to add the 'www' subdomain as shown in this articles.
Adding the 'www' subdomain in the panel will cause the HSTS preload check to fail with the following message.
`http://example.com` (HTTP) should immediately redirect to `https://example.com`
(HTTPS) before adding the www subdomain. Right now, the first redirect is to
`http://www.example.com/`. The extra redirect is required to ensure that any
browser which supports HSTS will record the HSTS entry for the top level domain,
not just the subdomain.
If you wish to use Cloudflare and add your domain to the HSTS preload list, you must purchase a Cloudflare account directly from Cloudflare. This will allow you the option to remove the 'www' subdomain.
Enabling CORS
Cross Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) allows restricted resources on a website to be requested from another domain outside the domain from which it was originally served. View the following pages for further details.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Strict_Transport_Security
- https://www.owasp.org/index.php/HTTP_Strict_Transport_Security_Cheat_Sheet
Adding the following to your .htaccess file will enable CORS.
Make sure to specify the 'Content-Type'. View the following two links for examples:
Header add Access-Control-Allow-Origin: "*" Header add Access-Control-Allow-Methods: "GET,POST,OPTIONS,DELETE,PUT" Header add Access-Control-Allow-Headers: "Content-Type"
You can then test if it's active on a site such as this:
You can also use curl to test. Just substitute example.com with your website.
[server]$ curl -H "Origin: http://example.com" \ -H "Access-Control-Request-Method: POST" \ -H "Access-Control-Request-Headers: X-Requested-With" \ -X OPTIONS --verbose \ https://www.googleapis.com/discovery/v1/apis?fields=
X-Frame-Options
This header helps to protect your visitors against clickjacking attacks. You should add this header on pages that shouldn't be allowed to render a page within a frame.
# X-Frame-Options <IfModule mod_headers.c> Header always append X-Frame-Options SAMEORIGIN </IfModule>
Cross-site Scripting protection (XSS)
This header helps to protect your visitors against Cross-site Scripting attacks. View the following article for further details:
# X-XSS-Protection <IfModule mod_headers.c> Header set X-XSS-Protection "1; mode=block" </IfModule>
X-Content-Type-Options
This header blocks content sniffing that could transform non-executable MIME types into executable MIME types. View the following article for further details:
#X-Content-Type-Options <IfModule mod_headers.c> Header set X-Content-Type-Options nosniff </IfModule>
Content-Security-Policy
This header specifies approved sources of content the browser is allowed to load. The example below tells the browser to only load content originating from the specified website over HTTPS.
If you're going to force the HTTPS rule, make sure you're already added an SSL certificate and are forcing all connections to use it.
View the following article for further details:
Header set Content-Security-Policy "default-src https://example.com:443"
