htaccess rewrite rule to a specific PHP page doesn't work

Question

I have the following code in my .htaccess file, placed in the root of my Ubuntu 22.04 instance:

Options +FollowSymLinks RewriteEngine on RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteRule ^profile/([^/]*)$ /profile.php?user=$1 [L] 

My goal is to use:

example.com/profile/johndoe

to get the following output URL:

example.com/profile.php?user=johndoe

but it doesn't work :(

mod_rewrite is on

My apache2.conf looks like this:

<Directory /> Options FollowSymLinks AllowOverride All Require all granted </Directory> <Directory /usr/share> AllowOverride None Require all granted </Directory> <Directory /var/www/> Options Indexes FollowSymLinks AllowOverride All Require all granted </Directory> <Directory /var/www/html/> Options Indexes FollowSymLinks AllowOverride All Require all granted </Directory> 

I don't know what I'm doing wrong, any help will be greatly appreciated

Answer 1

You can try putting your .htaccess file in /var/www/html/. Your issue is probably permission related. Check your logs in /var/log/apache2/access.log and /var/log/apache2/error.log for more details.

Also, do not allow access to the root filesystem, it's a security issue. So change

<Directory /> Options FollowSymLinks AllowOverride All Require all granted </Directory> 

to

<Directory /> Options FollowSymLinks Require all denied </Directory>