The .htaccess file is a vital component of your WordPress website. It plays a key role in managing permalink structures and redirect rules that allow WordPress to serve your content properly. If this file becomes corrupted, your website may throw errors, display broken links, or fail to load entirely.
This guide will walk you through how to restore or recreate a default .htaccess file to get your site back up and running.
What Is the Default WordPress .htaccess File?
The default .htaccess file controls URL rewriting enabling clean, SEO-friendly permalinks by routing non-existing file and folder requests to WordPress's index.php.
Here’s what the default WordPress .htaccess file looks like: