ok, so today, i wanted to start making my urls more search engine friendly (SEO), i wrote my .httaccess file and made the changes on my files to make sure the urls are as i put them in the .htacess file. when i tried to open my urls, i kept getting this Apache 500 error:



CODE:
Internal Server Error

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

Please contact the server administrator, webmaster @example.com and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

Additionally, a 500 Internal Server Error error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
Apache/2.2.0  Server at thisdomain.com Port 80


I remember a whie back ago i got this same error on another apache server. so what i had to do was look at the /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf file make sure i uncomment the mod_rewrite, so i logged into the linux shell and opened the httpd.conf file:

CODE:
nano /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

When i open it, found that the mod_rewrite was not commented out, so wha else could be the problem, as you can see,
LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so the is not commented out in the httpd.conf file:


CODE:

LoadModule speling_module modules/mod_speling.so
LoadModule userdir_module modules/mod_userdir.so
LoadModule alias_module modules/mod_alias.so
LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so
LoadModule proxy_module modules/mod_proxy.so
LoadModule proxy_balancer_module modules/mod_proxy_balancer.so
LoadModule proxy_ftp_module modules/mod_proxy_ftp.so
LoadModule proxy_http_module modules/mod_proxy_http.so
LoadModule proxy_connect_module modules/mod_proxy_connect.so


so what else could be the problem i wondered...
Then i checked for AlloweOverride :

CODE:
<Directory />
    Options FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride None
</Directory>


I changed AllowOverride from None to All, rebooted the server and i still kept getting the 500 error. at this point i was breaking my head..
so i checked my .htaccess file again to make sure i didn't make a typo or something, so this is how my .htacces files looks like:

CODE:
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^p-([0-9]*).html viewpage.php?id=$1


So i removed the Options +FollowSymLinks then uploaded it my site, and voala! i didn't get the error anymore. so this is how my .htaccess file looks like now:

CODE:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^p-([0-9]*).html viewpage.php?id=$1


Thanks to the support team at www.webune.com for helping me with this problem, i had read a post regarding this on this fourm but could not get a resolution on the problems.

Thanks Webune for your support on my dedicated server. - that's what i call service.

UPDATE: note, you will get this error when you have a syntax error in your .htaccess files, so double check your spelling, you will find that you mispelled something. the reason is because apache cannot recognize the code you put in your .htaccess file. one way you can confirm its a bad syntax in your .htaccess file, is try removing all the code and then try your website again without any code in the .htaccess file, if it doesnt give you an 500 error, then you know for sure you have a bad syntax in your .htaccess file.