If you’ve ever spent any real time working with WordPress, there’s a fairly good chance you’ve run across a strange file in the root (or topmost) directory. Whereas the vast majority of the files comprising the WordPress hierarchy consist of a filename and an extension, such as the crucial wp-config.php, one single file seem a bit out of place. That file is the aptly-named .htaccess file. So just what is the .htaccess file?