htaccess for SEO friendly urls

Question

So for two days I can not understand why this won't work...:

  Options -Indexes 
  Options +FollowSymLinks
  RewriteEngine On
  RewriteRule ^advice/([a-zA-Z]+)/([0-9]+)/$ advice.php?advice=$1&id=$2

Obviously .htaccess is allowed since I am not able to directory open folders, but why doesn't the link work?

Answer 1

Try turning off multiviews so the server doesn't try and search for that as a file. In addition add the conditions so that it knows it's not looking for a real file or directory it's trying to serve and make the trailing slash optional.

  Options -Indexes +FollowSymLinks -MultiViews
  RewriteEngine On
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
  RewriteRule ^advice/([a-zA-Z]+)/([0-9]+)/?$ /advice.php?advice=$1&id=$2 [L]

Answer 2

Does your RewriteRule redirect to an existing file? Try this, it works for me

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule . /test2/test.php

• http://example.com/test2/.htaccess shows the location of the .htaccess file
• http://example.com/test2/test.php is a direct link
• http://example.com/test2/testX4XX opens the same test.php file using rewrite