I have a site with few static pages and a blog. The blog is WordPress based and it is installed in subfolder. After using caching plugin I discovered .htaccess file in blog subfolder - it is full with caching related instructions. I already have an .htaccess file in the HTML root, this one has some redirects, blocking spam bots, cache expiration instructions, etc. Now I am confused whether I should merge these 2 .htaccess files into one and place it in HTML root... Basically my question is: If I have .htaccess file in the HTML root, will .htaccess file in the blog folder ever be used/loaded? In other words, I am afraid that everything that caching plugin updated in .htaccess file to enable cache will never be read, and as a result, the caching will not work. Please help to clarify this.
The .htaccess file in the blog folder will be used every time your blog page is viewed by a human or bot. Leave it alone. Do not merge them.
An .htaccess file in a subfolder overrides a root-folder .htaccess - if there's no overlapping instructions, they'll behave in tandem (unless your host has some very weird settings)