Rewrite rules stop working when document root changes

Question

I have two copies of a folder in separate locations. They contain the exact same .htaccess file. Both .htaccess files have the same permissions and owners.

/home/sites/site/public_html/ /var/www/html/site/ 

I had a VirtualHost whose DocumentRoot used to point to /home/sites but I changed it to /var/www and restarted Apache.

Now my htaccess rules no longer work. For example, /story/id should rewrite to /index.php?id=$id. If I go to /index.php?id=$id in my browser, the page loads as it should, but if I go to /story/id I get a 404 error.

If I change DocumentRoot back to the old root, the links start working again.

Any ideas on what may be causing this?

Answer 1

The solution was in the main httpd.conf file. AllowOverride was set to none for /var/www/html, which didn't matter before because the web folder was in /home/. Once we set that to All, the rewrite rules started working again.