What is the significance of .htaccess of wordpress?

Question

Here is .htaccess from my local wordpress installation.

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /wordpress/
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /wordpress/index.php [L]
</IfModule>

# END WordPress

Even when I have removed these directives from the .htaccess file still wordpress works fine, why is that so? why was this added if wordpress can work fine without it?

Answer 1

This is utilizing Apache's mod_rewrite so your Wordpress installation can make use of nice-looking URLs that look something like http://www.example.com/2015/8/12/my-post-title/ instead of http://www.example.com/?post=173663 . This improves your SEO and users' experiences on your site, and the vast majority of major blogging software supports it!