RewriteRule creating 500 Internal Server Error

Question

I have the following in my .htaccess file:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^directory/(.*)$ directory/index.php?id=$1

Answer 1

You should try adding a forward slash to the front:

RewriteRule ^/directory/(.*)$ directory/index.php?id=$1

I've been caught out with that before.

Alternatively use the RewriteLog and RewriteLogLevel to debug, and look at the Apache error and access logs for further info:

RewriteLogLevel 3
RewriteLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/rewrite.log

That will leave a log file in your apache log directory. In my case that is /var/log/apache