Mod Rewrite with .htaccess

Enabling Mod Rewrite with .htaccess

Do you use mod-rewrite from apache to rewrite friendly URLs ?? This must be absolutely necessary for the rewrite module to get enabled in your apache, especially if your blog, forum script uses rewriting engine to generate friendly URLs in your site. Note that default apache2 installation does not come with mod-rewrite. Here is how you enable it. Issue the following command

# a2enmod rewrite

Once you run this command, apache will tell you that this rewrite module is enabled. You can find mod_rewrite enabled and show up in your test.php file.
I often experienced page not found 404 error with debian/ubuntu versions eventhough your apache runs with mod-rewrite. To fix this, you will need to edit the following file to make some changes.

nano /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default

Find the following and change AllowOverride from None to All

Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
allow from all
# Uncomment this directive is you want to see apache2's
# default start page (in /apache2-default) when you go to /
#RedirectMatch ^/$ /apache2-default/

Upload the .htaccess file to your server and restart apache. /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
Make sure your .htaccess file has 644 permission as otherwise you get permission denied error.