Are there any best practices for utilizing .htaccess in PHP development?

When utilizing .htaccess in PHP development, it is important to follow best practices to ensure security and performance. One common best practice is to use .htaccess to restrict access to sensitive files or directories, such as configuration files or user uploads. Additionally, you can use .htaccess to enable URL rewriting for cleaner and more user-friendly URLs.

# Restrict access to sensitive files
<FilesMatch "\.(htaccess|htpasswd|ini|phps|fla|psd|log|sh)$">
  Order Allow,Deny
  Deny from all
</FilesMatch>

# Enable URL rewriting
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?url=$1 [QSA,L]