Wordpress Themes - WP Forum at BFA - [SOLVED] Modifying htaccess to speed things up

I was listening to a WP podcast today and they mentioned a copy and paste modification you can make to your .htaccess file that will speed up your WordPress site loads.

This suggestion is put forward by ghacks.net -- Speed Up Wordpress With Better Permalink Rewrite Code As I understand it, the way ghacks has organized the code reduces unnecessary "calls" and "checks"

Simply, you paste the following into your.htaccess file replacing what's already there between "# BEGIN WordPress" and "# END WordPress".

Code to be pasted:

Code:

# BEGIN WordPress

#

RewriteEngine on

#

# Unless you have set a different RewriteBase preceding this point,

# you may delete or comment-out the following RewriteBase directive

# RewriteBase /

#

# if this request is for "/" or has already been rewritten to WP

RewriteCond $1 ^(index\.php)?$ [OR]

# or if request is for image, css, or js file



RewriteCond $1 \.(gif|jpg|php|ico|css|js)$ [NC,OR]

# or if URL resolves to existing file

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f [OR]

# or if URL resolves to existing directory

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d

# then skip the rewrite to WP

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ - [S=1]

# else rewrite the request to WP

RewriteRule . /index.php [L]

#

# END wordpress

I was wondering if Flynn, J'Dad or anyone else here who understands the .htaccess better than me has any thoughts about this.

AND, while I'm at it -- in looking at one of my .htaccess files I find what looks like a duplication:

Code:

 1. <IfModule mod_rewrite.c>

 2. RewriteEngine On

 3. RewriteBase /

 4. RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f

 5. RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d

 6. RewriteRule . /index.php [L]

 7. </IfModule>





 8. # BEGIN WordPress

 9. <IfModule mod_rewrite.c>

10. RewriteEngine On

11. RewriteBase /

12. RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f

13. RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d

14. RewriteRule . /index.php [L]

15. </IfModule>



16. # END WordPress



17. redirect 301 /nostdir.html http://www.hatchtown.com/tools/misc-tools/nosting



18. redirect 301 /strait.html http://www.hatchtown.com/tools/spindles/spindle-hook-tuning

note: I've added the line numbers to simplify this discussion.

Question: Is the code in lines 1. - 7. accomplishing anything that won't be done by 8. - 16.? Can I just delete those lines?

Jim
PS _ I was going to ask WHICH .htaccess file in my site's directories was the "active" one, but I found where Paulae asked that LAST month and J'Dad already answered -- the system does work!