Thread

When deploy an Expression engine website I had some problems with the htaccess. On http://expressionengine.com/docs_assets/general/remove_index.php.html there is an example that says the following:

  # If 404s, “No Input File” or every URL returns the same thing
  # make it /index.php?/$1 above (add the question mark)

What difference does the question mark make in this case?

I tested this on 2 different hosting platforms. One of the hosting platforms showed an error like “no input file”.

After adding the questionmark the site only worked when index.php was in the url. For every other url that was called, the homepage was shown.

How could this happen?

Hi amimpact,

Please post the entire contents of your htaccess file so we can have a look.

Thank you,

Mike

Here is de content of the .htaccess

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
  RewriteEngine On

# always redirect to main domain with 301
  RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.domainname.com$
  RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.domainname.com/$1 [R=301,QSA,L]

  # Removes index.php
  RewriteCond $1 !\.(gif|jpe?g|png)$ [NC]
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
  RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php/$1 [L]

  # If 404s, “No Input File” or every URL returns the same thing
  # make it /index.php?/$1 above (add the question mark)

</IfModule>

I think this should fix it for you:

# always redirect to main domain with 301
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.domainname\.com$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ <a href="http://www.domainname.com/$1">http://www.domainname.com/$1</a> [R=301,QSA,L]

# Removes index.php
RewriteCond $1 !\.(css|js|swf|gif|jpe?g|png|ico)$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php?$1 [L]

Cheers,

Mike

Hey amimpact,

I am glad that Mike has been able to help you out here.

If his example does not work for you, you may want to head over to Community Help Forum. The only version of the .htaccess file that we support is the following.

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
        RewriteEngine On

        # Removes index.php
        RewriteCond $1 !\.(gif|jpe?g|png)$ [NC]
        RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
        RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
        RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php/$1 [L]

        # If 404s, "No Input File" or every URL returns the same thing
        # make it /index.php?/$1 above (add the question mark)
</IfModule>

Please let me know if there is anything else I can do.

Cheers,

Thanks for the examples.
I want to know what de questionmark does in this exact situation.
Why won’t it work if the questionmark is not used?

How can it be that only the homepage will be shown?

Hey amimpact,

These are good questions!

This here should explain why the questions mark is needed. Each server is different and some require query strings.

The homepage shows because it’s the homepage. There is not other segments in the URL which would require or not require query strings. Does that make sense?

Cheers,