.htaccess does not respond to any changes

[Tannu]

Have a Korean client(donno if the country matters :p) for whom when I upload htaccess file with any rewrite/redirect rules, the server (being apache) does not respond. I have already searched about the issue but couldn't understand or find an appropriate solution for this. The client says he has asked the hosting provider and they say that htaccess is enabled, no the exact thing they say is that "everything is enabled" (guess it includes the htaccess file permissions).

If someone could suggest any way to cross check if htaccess has been given rights to rewrite/redirect URLs, so that I can confirm the same with the client.

In case, if you need any other info do let me know or in other case if you have an answer than "toh" definitely let me know.

Appreciate any help...

[lucy24]

Did you empty your browser cache?

This would be an idiotic question, except for all the times when the answer turned out to be Uh... no. Oops. All better now.

when I upload htaccess file with any rewrite/redirect rules, the server (being apache) does not respond

Do you mean that it ignores those rules, or that everything else in htaccess also stops working, or that the server plays dead and gives all requests a 500-type error?

Do other aspects of htaccess work? Rock-bottom things like Options +Indexes (or -Indexes). Can you lock yourself out by saying Deny from aa.bb... (with your own exact IP)?

no the exact thing they say is that "everything is enabled" (guess it includes the htaccess file permissions)

Let's hope they mean that "Allow Overrides" is set to All. Rewrites/Redirects and Indexes are different categories of override, so they can enable one without the other. Auto-indexing will usually be enabled even if you've got a stuffy host who won't let you do anything else, so that's a good thing to try first.

[incrediBILL]

Did you actually put the "." in front of the file name on the server?

Perhaps if you show us a sample of what doesn't work and give us more clues.

For instance, certain things that normally work for PHP don't work if you're using the FastCGI environment, etc.

One thing you might also want to try, and I only saw this odd anomaly once, is on one server environment the .htaccess file didn't work in the http document root folder but did work when I moved the file up one level above the http document root which makes no sense whatsoever, but it worked and at that point I didn't care why. The only thing different about that account was that it had subdomains which shouldn't have made any difference but it sure seems to have done something odd.

[lucy24]

One thing you might also want to try, and I only saw this odd anomaly once, is on one server environment the .htaccess file didn't work in the http document root folder but did work when I moved the file up one level above the http document root which makes no sense whatsoever, but it worked and at that point I didn't care why.

In my case, some .htaccess directives will work in my userspace (one physical level "above" the domains) while others will only work in the individual domains' root. I haven't tested it exhaustively, because the way it works happens to be the way I'd choose to do it anyway ;)