Go Daddy Apache Upgrade

Go Daddy Apache Upgrade

Go Daddy just upgraded Apache on one of the webservers I use; an important one. I found out the hard way when I discovered my league website was entirely broken with 404 errors everywhere. I quickly narrowed it down to mod_rewrite and the RewriteRules in place in my .htaccess file.

Of course I contacted Go Daddy and of course I got little to no assistance. The first email I received was a copy of a KB article I had already read with regards to .htaccess and server side includes. I responded with more detail, but as turnaround time is not entirely fast I decided to call Go Daddy Support. The support rep initially told me I needed to wait until they answered my follow up question via email. I politely asked if they could work with me now, on the phone; and after a 5 minute hold job was told they had fixed my permissions issue. Comical stuff.

She did say something at one point that got me thinking; mentioning something about not supporting shortened URLโ€™s in mod_rewrite, needing to add .php into the rules. Deciding to end the call I was now in brow furrowing mode; she was incorrect but funnily enough did direct me to the right place.

A sample of my previous Rewrite looked like this:

RewriteEngine on
#Redirect News Articles
RewriteRule ^news.php/([^/]*)$ /news.php?mode=$1

After a bit of research and tinkering, it now looks like this:

Options +FollowSymlinks -MultiViews
RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /
#Redirect News Articles
RewriteRule ^news/([^/]*)$ /news.php?mode=$1

In my case, Options โ€“MultiViews was important, as was dropping the .php in the RewriteRule. So whilst the rep suggested that they didn’t support shortened URL’s in the RewriteRule, it so happens I needed to shorten it.

Note: This is not a WordPress or a Drupal installation, rather my own code, but it should help anyone who suddenly has Rewrite issues, particularly with GoDaddy. All the best!

Mike250

Australian. Sport. Passionate Cricket Fan. Go Pro. Abseiling. Snorkeling. Travel. Golf R. SQL Server Developer. Three sons. One daughter. Last Trip: New York.

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