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 URL’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 –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!