One of the changes in the new version of Joomla! 1.5.23 includes changes to .htaccess file. This will improve mod_rewrite processing speed by at least a factor of three, achieved by
re-arranging the rule order, and optimising the RegEx patterns. In particular, the new code eliminates a large number of slow and unnecessary disk reads for requests that will never be rewritten to the index.php script.
Similar action has already been taken for the 1.6 branch. Here is a list of changes made in the new version of the file:
- Line 44: RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} base64_encode[^(]*\([^)]*\) [OR]
- Line 46: RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} (<|%3C)([^s]*s)+cript.*(>|%3E) [NC,OR]
This line is for block out any script that includes a <script> tag in URL, and looks a little bit different there was in 1.5.22.
- Line 53: RewriteRule .* index.php [F]
- Line 76: RewriteRule .* - [E=HTTP_AUTHORIZATION:%{HTTP:Authorization}]
Changed the order of this "phrase" - Line 91: RewriteRule .* index.php [L]
This line is for block out any script that includes a
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May.20
The rule ordering change eliminates the "expensive" -f and -d "exists" checks for requests that clearly do not need them. In so doing, the page load speed is increased.
One or two other minor fixes were also included, especially optimising the "long" RegEx pattern. The new files appear in Joomla 1.5.23 onwards and Joomla 1.6.2 onwards.