Follow these steps carefully to create a .htaccess file for your website.The .htaccess file can gives instructions to your web hosting server for your particular domain and you should be very careful with it because it can potentially bring your entire MivaMerchant website down if Miva Merchant relies on the .htaccess file to function especially of your Miva Merchant store utilizes ‘short links’ or ‘SEO links’

Warning:
Make sure you make a backup copy of your current .htaccess file before editing it and replacing it on your server. The .htaccess file should be located in your web root directory. Sometimes that web root folder is called /httpdocs or /html or some variation of that. If you are not sure where your web root is then you should contact your webhost and ask.

Steps to create or update a .htaccess file.

1. Login to your server via FTP, SFTP or SSH
2. Change to your web root on the remote server
3. Look for a file named ‘.htaccess’
4. If you DO NOT see the .htaccess file then go to step 6 otherwise continue to step 5 otherwise go to step  7
5. If you do not see the .htaccess file it may still be there but it is considered to be a ‘hidden file’ by your FTP program. You will need to find the setting that allows your FTP program to show hidden files.
6. If the .htaccess file is truly not there then you can create a file called .htaccess on your local computer and upload it to your server. Your computer may not allow this file name to be created and if that is the case you should give the file a temporary name like ‘htaccess’ or ‘htaccess.txt’ then upload it to the server and rename it on the server.
7. Download the .htaccess file to your computer and also make a seperate copy of the file and place it in a safe directory for backup (just in case).
8. Edit the file appropriately then upload the file to the server. You may want to rename the current .htaccess file on the server (just in case) to something like currentdate.htaccess