: Why my site can run without .htaccess I build my site with Joomla and host with Linode. I was trying to understand .htaccess file. I learned some directives and added them on my htaccess.txt

@Goswami781

A site doesn't have to have a .htaccess file. If you don't have a .htaccess file, your site will run on the settings in the apache and PHP server configuration files.

Having your file named .htacces.txt (or .htaccess.bak for that matter) will not have any effect on your server, it won't refer to the file for any settings.

If you then rename your file to .htaccess the server will refer to the file. Since it then breaks, the error 500 tells you that there is some sort of error in the .htaccess file.

If it were me, I would copy everything to a text file, delete it from .htaccess and then add it line by line or block by block and see which line cause the error.

Assuming it isn't too big, you could post the contents of your .htaccess as an edit on the original question.

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@Si4351233

Firstly if the file is named htaccess.txt then that means the htaccess file is not enabled as only the file named .htaccess will work.

Secondly if you are getting a 500 error when you enable the .htaccess file you either have an error in your htaccess syntax or overrides are not supported. You would need to check the error logs to see which one it is. Some hosting providers, especially on shared servers, disable htaccess files as using htaccess overrides the server configurations applied by the hosting provider and can be dangerous if not done correctly.

From my research linode supports .htaccess overrides so the only thing I can suggest is that you check your htaccess syntax. If you are using the Joomla htaccess file check if the URL rewrite rules have been enabled as I have found the number one cause of htaccess errors where Joomla is involved is a server that does not have mod_rewrite enabled on the Apache server and yet is trying to declare rewrite rules in a htaccess directive.

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