Enable Apache Rewrite via htaccess

1st Method

For Yii I had the problem where the rewrite in the htaccess file wasn't working

Options +FollowSymLinks
IndexIgnore */*
RewriteEngine on

# if a directory or a file exists, use it directly
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d

# otherwise forward it to index.php
RewriteRule . index.php

This was because Apache2 didn't have rewrite enabled by default, and the default site configuration had AllowOverrides set to None

First I created a symlink

sudo ln -s /etc/apache2/mods-available/rewrite.load /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/rewrite.load

Then

sudo gedit /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default

change AllowOverride None to AllowOverride All thus:

DocumentRoot /var/www
	<Directory />
		Options FollowSymLinks
		AllowOverride All
	</Directory>
	<Directory /var/www/>
		Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
		AllowOverride All
		Order allow,deny
		allow from all
	</Directory>

Restart Apache

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2/restart

2nd Method

From Zend setup:

Configure Apache

We need to make sure that rewrite_module is enabled in apache2 for the Zend Framework to work properly, so lets check:

a2dismod

Hopefully you should see rewrite listed in the list of modules that are currently enabled. If not, press enter to disable nothing and then issue:

a2enmod rewrite

Then we need to enable AllowOverride All in the default site file

sudo gedit /etc/apache2/sites-available/default

[...]
  DocumentRoot /var/www/
        <Directory />
                Options FollowSymLinks
                AllowOverride All
        </Directory>
        <Directory var/www/>
                Options FollowSymLinks 
                AllowOverride All
                Order allow,deny
                allow from all
        </Directory>
[...]

Restart Apache afterwards:

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart