Best htaccess practices for scurity and performance

Recently, there was a thread about tightening vanilla security. So I thought I will share mine htaccess with you guys so everyone can benefit -

1) Open .htaccess file from forum root folder in any text editor

2) **Add ** below changes that suites you -

# ----------------------------------------------------------------------
# Better website experience for IE users
# ----------------------------------------------------------------------

# Force the latest IE version, in various cases when it may fall back to IE7 mode
# Use ChromeFrame if it's installed for a better experience for the poor IE folk

<IfModule mod_headers.c>
  Header set X-UA-Compatible "IE=Edge,chrome=1"
  # mod_headers can't match by content-type, but we don't want to send this header on *everything*...
  <FilesMatch "\.(appcache|crx|css|eot|gif|htc|ico|jpe?g|js|m4a|m4v|manifest|mp4|oex|oga|ogg|ogv|otf|pdf|png|safariextz|svg|svgz|ttf|vcf|webm|webp|woff|xml|xpi)$">
    Header unset X-UA-Compatible
  </FilesMatch>
</IfModule>




# ----------------------------------------------------------------------
# Gzip compression
# ----------------------------------------------------------------------

<IfModule mod_deflate.c>

  # Force deflate for mangled headers developer.yahoo.com/blogs/ydn/posts/2010/12/pushing-beyond-gzipping/
  <IfModule mod_setenvif.c>
    <IfModule mod_headers.c>
      SetEnvIfNoCase ^(Accept-EncodXng|X-cept-Encoding|X{15}|~{15}|-{15})$ ^((gzip|deflate)\s*,?\s*)+|[X~-]{4,13}$ HAVE_Accept-Encoding
      RequestHeader append Accept-Encoding "gzip,deflate" env=HAVE_Accept-Encoding
    </IfModule>
  </IfModule>

  # Compress all output labeled with one of the following MIME-types
  # (for Apache versions below 2.3.7, you don't need to enable `mod_filter`
  # and can remove the `<IfModule mod_filter.c>` and `</IfModule>` lines as
  # `AddOutputFilterByType` is still in the core directives)
  <IfModule mod_filter.c>
    AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/atom+xml \
                                  application/javascript \
                                  application/json \
                                  application/rss+xml \
                                  application/vnd.ms-fontobject \
                                  application/x-font-ttf \
                                  application/xhtml+xml \
                                  application/xml \
                                  font/opentype \
                                  image/svg+xml \
                                  image/x-icon \
                                  text/css \
                                  text/html \
                                  text/plain \
                                  text/x-component \
                                  text/xml
  </IfModule>

</IfModule>


# ----------------------------------------------------------------------
# Expires headers (for better cache control)
# ----------------------------------------------------------------------

# These are pretty far-future expires headers.
# They assume you control versioning with filename-based cache busting
# Additionally, consider that outdated proxies may miscache
#   www.stevesouders.com/blog/2008/08/23/revving-filenames-dont-use-querystring/

# If you don't use filenames to version, lower the CSS and JS to something like
# "access plus 1 week".

<IfModule mod_expires.c>
  ExpiresActive on

# Perhaps better to whitelist expires rules? Perhaps.
  ExpiresDefault                          "access plus 1 month"

# cache.appcache needs re-requests in FF 3.6 (thanks Remy ~Introducing HTML5)
  ExpiresByType text/cache-manifest       "access plus 0 seconds"

# Your document html
  ExpiresByType text/html                 "access plus 0 seconds"

# Data
  ExpiresByType application/json          "access plus 0 seconds"
  ExpiresByType application/xml           "access plus 0 seconds"
  ExpiresByType text/xml                  "access plus 0 seconds"

# Feed
  ExpiresByType application/atom+xml      "access plus 1 hour"
  ExpiresByType application/rss+xml       "access plus 1 hour"

# Favicon (cannot be renamed)
  ExpiresByType image/x-icon              "access plus 1 week"

# Media: images, video, audio
  ExpiresByType audio/ogg                 "access plus 1 month"
  ExpiresByType image/gif                 "access plus 1 month"
  ExpiresByType image/jpeg                "access plus 1 month"
  ExpiresByType image/png                 "access plus 1 month"
  ExpiresByType video/mp4                 "access plus 1 month"
  ExpiresByType video/ogg                 "access plus 1 month"
  ExpiresByType video/webm                "access plus 1 month"

# HTC files  (css3pie)
  ExpiresByType text/x-component          "access plus 1 month"

# Webfonts
  ExpiresByType application/vnd.ms-fontobject "access plus 1 month"
  ExpiresByType application/x-font-ttf    "access plus 1 month"
  ExpiresByType application/x-font-woff   "access plus 1 month"
  ExpiresByType font/opentype             "access plus 1 month"
  ExpiresByType image/svg+xml             "access plus 1 month"

# CSS and JavaScript
  ExpiresByType application/javascript    "access plus 1 year"
  ExpiresByType text/css                  "access plus 1 year"

</IfModule>


# ----------------------------------------------------------------------
# Prevent mobile network providers from modifying your site
# ----------------------------------------------------------------------

# The following header prevents modification of your code over 3G on some
# European providers.
# This is the official 'bypass' suggested by O2 in the UK.

# <IfModule mod_headers.c>
# Header set Cache-Control "no-transform"
# </IfModule>


# ----------------------------------------------------------------------
# ETag removal
# ----------------------------------------------------------------------

# FileETag None is not enough for every server.
<IfModule mod_headers.c>
  Header unset ETag
</IfModule>

# Since we're sending far-future expires, we don't need ETags for
# static content.
#   developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html#etags
FileETag None



# ----------------------------------------------------------------------
# Suppress or force the "www." at the beginning of URLs
# ----------------------------------------------------------------------

# The same content should never be available under two different URLs -
# especially not with and without "www." at the beginning, since this can cause
# SEO problems (duplicate content). That's why you should choose one of the
# alternatives and redirect the other one.

# By default option 1 (no "www.") is activated.
# no-www.org/faq.php?q=class_b

# If you'd prefer to use option 2, just comment out all option 1 lines
# and uncomment option 2.

# IMPORTANT: NEVER USE BOTH RULES AT THE SAME TIME!

# ----------------------------------------------------------------------

# Option 1:
# Rewrite "www.example.com -> example.com".

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
  RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !=on
  RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.(.+)$ [NC]
  RewriteRule ^ http://%1%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]
</IfModule>

# ----------------------------------------------------------------------

# Option 2:
# Rewrite "example.com -> www.example.com".
# Be aware that the following rule might not be a good idea if you use "real"
# subdomains for certain parts of your website.

# <IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
#   RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !=on
#   RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\..+$ [NC]
#   RewriteRule ^ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]
# </IfModule>