#+TITLE: mod\_rewrite with Fedora 10 and ISPConfig for WordPress
#+DATE: 2009-12-09 10:33
#+TAGS: apache2 fedora ispconfig mod_rewrite

This relates to Fedora 10 and ISPConfig 3.0.1 set up as described in
[[http://www.howtoforge.org/perfect-server-fedora-10-ispconfig-3][this HowtoForge post]].

One of my colleagues recently got interested in offering our clients
Wordpress as a content management system, so he's been trying it out.

Yesterday he found out that if he wanted to change the permalink style
in Wordpress he needed write access to =.htaccess=, which he didn't have
because the user rights haven't been set up very well there.

So I gave him write access by using

#+BEGIN_SRC sh
  chown apache:apache .htaccess
#+END_SRC

Unfortunately this resulted in a 500 Interal Server Error.

Looking at the error log for the website I tried this for it let me
know that =RewriteEngine= directives were not allowed in the =.htaccess=.

Since I didn't want to mess with the base configurations of ISPConfig
I started looking around for other options. Eventually I found that I
had to add something similar to this to the Apache directives field
under options under the website's settings

#+BEGIN_SRC text
  <IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
  <Directory /var/www/[sitename]/web/>
  Options +FollowSymLinks
  RewriteEngine On
  RewriteBase /
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
  RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
  </Directory>
  </IfModule>
#+END_SRC

Of course ~[sitename]~ should be replaced with the name of your website.

It all works after I restarted the apache server myself, but I do not
know if that is completely necessary. Also it might take a few seconds
before ISPConfig finishes editing the configuration file.