Apache's .htaccess files have a generally bad reputation. For example, lots of people will tell you that they can cause performance problems and you should move everything from .htaccess files into your main Apache configuration, using various pieces of Apache syntax to restrict what configuration directives apply to. The result can even be clearer, since various things can be confusing in .htaccess files (eg rewrites and redirects ). Despite all of this, .htaccess files are important and valuable because of one property, which is that they enable delegation of parts of your server configuration to other people.

The Apache .htaccess documentation even spells this out in reverse, in When (not) to use .htaccess files :

In general, you should only use .htaccess files when you don't have access to the main server configuration file. [...]

If you operate the server and would be writing the .htaccess file, you can put the contents of the .htaccess in the main server configuration and make your life easier and Apache faster (and you probably should). But if the web server and its configuration isn't managed as a unitary whole by one group, then .htaccess files allow the people managing the overall Apache configuration to safely delegate things to other people on a per-directory basis, using Unix ownership. This can both enable people to do additional things and reduce the amount of work the central people have to do, letting people things scale better.

(The other thing that .htaccess files allow is dynamic updates without having to restart or reload the whole server. In some contexts this can be useful or important, for example if the updates are automatically generated at unpredictable times.)

I don't think it's an accident that .htaccess files emerged in Apache, because one common environment Apache was initially used in was old fashioned multi-user Unix web servers where, for example, every person with a login on the web server might have their own UserDir directory hierarchy. Hence features like suEXEC , so you could let people run CGIs without those CGIs having to run as the web user (a dangerous thing), and also hence the attraction of .htaccess files. If you have a bunch of (graduate) students with their own web areas, you definitely don't want to let all of them edit your departmental web server's overall configuration.

(Apache doesn't solve all your problems here, at least not in a simple configuration; you're still left with the multiuser PHP problem . Our solution to this problem is somewhat brute force.)

These environments are uncommon today but they're not extinct, at least at universities like mine, and .htaccess files (and Apache's general flexibility) remain valuable to us.