fixing cakephp .htaccess/mod_rewrite for shared hosting setups

Question

I'm trying to install cakePHP on a shared hosting setup. After extracting the files to a location like ~/public_html/dev/cake and visiting the appropriate URL (in this case http://hostname/~username/dev/cake/), I receive a 404 error:

---

Not Found

The requested URL /usr/home/username/public_html/dev/cake/app/webroot/ was not found on this server.

---

I suspect that the reason for this is that upon closer inspection, the absolute path to ~/public_html is not in fact /usr/home/username/public_html, but rather /usr/www/users/username/.

Here's what I've been trying (but obviously it's not working): (~/public_html/dev/cake/app/webroot/.htaccess)

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>  
    RewriteEngine On  
    RewriteBase /usr/www/users/username/dev/cake/app/webroot/ 
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d  
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f  
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?url=$1 [QSA,L]  
</IfModule>  

Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to change anything (the 404 message remains that same). Thoughts?

Answer 1

Shouldn't

RewriteBase /usr/www/users/username/dev/cake/app/webroot/ 

be

RewriteBase /~username/dev/cake/

RewriteBase cares about mapping real urls to virtual ones, and I think that's what you want.

Answer 2

You're modifying the wrong file. The .htaccess file you need to modify is found in /dev, you shouldn't be modifying the one in /dev/cake/app/webroot/.htaccess

Answer 3

I just want to point out that I THOUGHT the module was loaded because I saw the code but apparently it was not enabled!

To enable it in SSH (terminal) type the following command

sudo a2enmod rewrite

The command below shows all modules that are active, if it appears in the list then you have it installed.

apache2ctl -M

Make sure to restart the server with...

service apache2 restart

PhpCake should start working now.

Answer 4

Why not just extract the files to /usr/www/users/username/?