WP Engine has announced that it will no longer support .htaccess after the release of PHP 7.4.
WP Engine has announced that in PHP 7.4, the .htaccess file will no longer be used. The .htaccess is an Apache configuration file that a web admin can use to tell Apache how to interact with a website. It can control any number of things on a site-by-site basis, like how your URLs are formed or restricting access to a directory. Older PHP versions will continue to support .htaccess files as normal.
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Performance boost
WP Engine also claims that the .htaccess file is cumbersome to read and slows down performance. The file must be queried for every request, of which there may be dozens per page. This problem is only made worse as information is added and the file becomes larger and larger.
WP Engine has also shared a list of alternative methods for webmasters who use custom directives in .htaccess file.
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