.htaccess issue (500 - Internal Server Error) error

Question

I was trying to learn how to edit and make a .htaccess file using a tutorial found at corz.org, I copied an existing .htaccess file from another site on my localhost and pasted the following content in it the follow:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^(.*)\.html$ $a.php [NC]

I was trying to learn how to redirect HTML pages to some PHP page.

My questions are:

1. I tried doing Right Click > New > Text Document > Renaming it '.htaccess'. It should work but it gave an error that I must provide file name. But when I pasted .htaccess file here it was pasted successfully... Why is this? the same rules should apply to .htaccess file and it should generate some error.
2. I have pasted the exact code and checked for any space UN-intentionally left, but still internal server error 500 occurs. Why is this?

Note: I am using Microsoft Windows and Wamp version 2.2

Answer 1

I use this:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
#RewriteBase /

# check if the file don't exists then redirect
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^(.*)\.html$ $1.php [NC,L]

and it work fine, the $a should be $1

RewriteEngine On Enables the rewrite IF mod_rewrite is enable.

RewriteBase / Executes all the rules from the root (/) directory.

RewriteRule ^(.*).html$ $1.php [NC,L]

• ^ means Start with
• (.*) means everything. Although, I prefer using ([a-z0-9_\-]+) which only allows letters, numbers, underscores and dashes
• $1 means the first matching regular expression that the rule find.