How to make the server accept these .htaccess lines?

[FrankC]

.
I would like to keep my local files in sync with my remote files, including the .htaccess. But it I put

Code: Select all

ExpiresActive On
ExpiresDefault "modification"

in it, I get a 500 internal local server error, while on the remote server there is no problem.

The RewriteEngine lines do not give any error. How can I make the local server accept the Expires line as well?

[Altrea]

Does your Apache error.log file contain any message about this error?

[FrankC]

Thanks for the speedy reply!

It does:

Code: Select all

[Fri Mar 15 04:52:47 2013] [alert] [client 127.0.0.1] C:/xampp/htdocs/Websites/TSE/.htaccess: Invalid command 'ExpiresActive', perhaps misspelled or defined by a module not included in the server configuration.

But I don't know what to do with that, because .htaccess in itself is accepted -- the RewriteEngine lines prove that. And it is not misspelled either, see httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_expires.html.

[Altrea]

Is mod_expires included and activated in your Apache httpd.conf?
By default it is commented out.

[FrankC]

That did the trick. Not at first, but after restarting Apache it worked perfectly. Thanks!

Just one question: why is that commented out by default? Isn't caching until modified very important for a speedy site rendering, and isn't through .htaccess the only way to accomplish that?

[Altrea]

XAMPP is a local testing and development environment. Speed by caching is not the primary focus i think.
And it can be very confusing (and increasing the support amound here) to beginners having issues of old cached data.

but the real reason is: XAMPP is based on the Apache binaries of ApacheLounge and there is and was no need to activate the module because most users don't miss it (and if, they can easily activate it).