Clean URLs on WampServer
Many content management systems — Wordpress, Drupal, and Silverstripe come to mind — make use of “clean URLs“. This is a feature of the web server which instantly converts people and search engine friendly paths (tool.com/products/screws/) into paths for use by the application (tool.com/index.php?product=4).
On the Apache web server, the rewrite module must be enabled for clean URLs to function properly. This module is usually disabled by default. Fortunately, WampServer provides a graphical interface which makes it simple to modify Apache settings.
Ready to enable rewrite_module? Here’s how:
- Start WampServer. An icon should appear in your task bar:
- Click the icon to open WampServer’s main menu.
- Open the ‘Apache‘ submenu and then ‘Apache modules‘.
- Scroll down to ‘rewrite_module’ and click to enable it.
That’s all there is to it! A quick tip, but important nonetheless and something I’ve seen a lot of CMS users — myself included — get stuck on. I hope this helps.
Ah, I wish it worked here as well! I followed the steps correctly but I get this error message when trying out the clean URL page (admin/settings/clean-urls):
Bad Request
Your browser sent a request that this server could not understand.
What version of Wampserver do you use? Mine is 2.0, and I’m running it under Windows XP.
I checked the httpd.conf file, and this line is indeed uncommented, but still no dice:
LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so
I’m also using Wampserver 2.0 on Windows XP. The only thing I can think of off hand is to download the Drupal and replace your .htaccess with a fresh copy. I’d suggest posting on the Drupal.org forums as your best bet.