Sincerely, I can’t agree with James Hayden that the $500 millions Healthcare.gov website failed due to an Apache misconfiguration, because a half billion website should not exist at all ! But totally agree that security and performance wise, if there is not a real need for .htaccess it should be disabled. Usually .htaccess is needed on shared hosting only, otherwise it always better to use Apache main config files.
To configure your WordPress for example, simply copy paste your .htaccess content to your Apache config file then make sure you disable this feature from your server. There are more tips to tweak your Apache performance by disabling unused modules. Notice that these are not hidden tweak or something new, as it’s officially documented as the recommended best practices. So make sure you read very well the documentation, and of course there is no need to spend $500 millions on your next website !
