[[!meta title=".htaccess files no longer require mode 777"]]
It is no longer necessary to use `chmod 777 .htaccess` to mark your
.htaccess files readable by Apache. As of May 30, 2009, Apache is
now given implicit read access to all file with names beginning in
“.ht”, such as .htaccess or .htpasswd (assuming the AFS directory
is readable by daemon.scripts, as is automatically the case in your
web\_scripts directory by default).