.htaccess rules to Harden your website’s Security

Below you see a list of the important rules that you can add to your .htaccess file to harden security, by greatly limiting the exposure of your website to many types of attacks.
Some of these rules include basic redirects, locking outside access to particular files, or more advanced functions such as preventing image hotlinking.
Add the following snippet to your /public_html/.htaccess file and modify where necessary.

# Disable the server signature
ServerSignature Off

# Disable unauthorized directory browsing
Options All -Indexes

# Block access to multiple file types
# Apache < 2.4
<IfModule !mod_authz_core.c>
<FilesMatch “\.(htaccess|htpasswd|ini|log|sh)$”>
Order deny,allow
Deny from all
</FilesMatch>
</IfModule>
# Apache >= 2.4
<IfModule mod_authz_core.c>
<FilesMatch “\.(htaccess|htpasswd|ini|log|sh)$”>
<RequireAll>
Require all denied
</RequireAll>
</FilesMatch>
</IfModule>

# Protect your wp-config.php file
# Apache < 2.4
<IfModule !mod_authz_core.c>
<Files wp-config.php>
Order deny,allow
Deny from all
</Files>
</IfModule>
# Apache >= 2.4
<IfModule mod_authz_core.c>
<Files wp-config.php>
<RequireAll>
Require all denied
</RequireAll>
</Files>
</IfModule>

# Prevent Image Hot Linking. Replace with your domain name
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www.)?yourdomain.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule .(gif|jpg|swf|flv|png)$ http://www.yoursite.com/hotlink.gif [R,L]