HTTP 500 with RewriteRule

[lukas.vandendijssel]

This .htaccess throws me a 500 error. I've Googled/tried everything.

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^([0-9]{6})$ decode.php?shorturl=$1 [L]

It's for a URL shortener. I am new to this stuff.

What URL are you expecting from your links and users? e.g. http://www.example.com/123456 ?

rewriting usually gets the better of me too. Have you checked the error log? Typically at:

apache/logs/error.log

[lukas.vandendijssel]

Yes. But if they go to http://www.example.com/ they will have to go to my page where you can shorten links etc (index.php).

Why not just change decode.php to index.php?

Like:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^([0-9]{6})$ /index.php?shorturl=$1 [L]

[lukas.vandendijssel]

I guess that won't solve my 500 error.

Did you check your logs?

//EDIT

This works fine for me:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^([0-9]{6})$ /product.php?shorturl=$1 [L]

Then in my product.php page:

<?php echo (isset($_GET['shorturl'])) ? 'ShortUrl: ' . $_GET['shorturl'] : 'No short url' ;?>

Which when I enter the address: www.example.com/123456 (not lierally - just my testing site) gives me the output:

ShortUrl: 123456

[lukas.vandendijssel]

Well, that gives me a 500 error. There's nothing special in the logs.

OK, sorry, I can't reproduce the error. Anybody else?

[lukas.vandendijssel]

Well, I solved it. I did not have the mod_rewrite module installed.

Doh! Thanks for sharing.