Drupal ships with two .htaccess files: one is at the Drupal root, and the other is automatically generated
after you create your directory to store uploaded files and visit Configuration -> File system to tell Drupal
where the directory is. Any .htaccess files are searched for, read, and parsed on every request. In
contrast, httpd.conf is read only when Apache is started. Apache directives can live in either file. If you
have control of your own server, you should move the contents of the .htaccess files to the main Apache
configuration file (httpd.conf) and disable .htaccess lookups within your web server root by setting
AllowOverride to None:
<Directory />
AllowOverride None
...
</Directory>
This prevents Apache from traversing up the directory tree of every request looking for the
.htaccess file to execute. Apache will then have to do less work for each request, giving it more time to
serve more requests.
after you create your directory to store uploaded files and visit Configuration -> File system to tell Drupal
where the directory is. Any .htaccess files are searched for, read, and parsed on every request. In
contrast, httpd.conf is read only when Apache is started. Apache directives can live in either file. If you
have control of your own server, you should move the contents of the .htaccess files to the main Apache
configuration file (httpd.conf) and disable .htaccess lookups within your web server root by setting
AllowOverride to None:
<Directory />
AllowOverride None
...
</Directory>
This prevents Apache from traversing up the directory tree of every request looking for the
.htaccess file to execute. Apache will then have to do less work for each request, giving it more time to
serve more requests.