Quentin Rademaker Dot Com

After switching my WordPress powered site from Strato (which is the slowest servers you can get in the netherlands) to my current host Hostway, I started off with a very big problem with mod_rewrite rules on this site. I wanted all the urls to be displayed SEO friendly. Well after searching all over the web I came accross the solution.

I wanted all my urls to contain the tittle of the article like http://www.quentinrademaker.com/2009/03/new-gaming-mouse-from-sharkoon/ instead of http://www.quentinrademaker.com/?p=684 which is not very attractive SEO solution. A simple mod_rewrite rule like the following would fail with a 403 Access forbidden error:

RewriteRule . /index.php [L]

I was puzzled for a while seeing I didn’t have any problems over at Strato (apart from being slow as hell). I must admit that eversince I swithced I have never ever had any problems, everything else works like clockwork at Hostway. Sadly they don’t have any support on sunday’s so I had to find a solution myself. I don’t like waiting to get help from someone else, that is if I can find the solution myself ;-)

After a few cokes and a pack of smokes I finally found the answer. A simple search with Google got me reading a discussion at WordPress that provided the solution. Putting the following at the top of the .htaccess file works for me:

Options +ExecCGI +FollowSymLinks -Indexes -MultiViews

Now all links are working as they should gving it it’s SEO friendly look. I hope this info will help others as well, this solution does not only apply to Hostway clients. If you come across the same issue over at your hosting provider feel free to try this solution. If it works for you please let me know by leaving a reply. It might help others with the same issue as well ;-)