FrontPage doesn’t like RewriteRule

FrontPage doesn’t like RewriteRule

I noticed something strange in my apache error logs today:

Options FollowSymLinks or SymLinksIfOwnerMatch is off which implies that 
RewriteRule directive is forbidden: 
/usr/local/frontpage/version4.0/apache-fp/_vti_bin/fpexe

After a bit of searching, I found the problem and how to fix it

References on the net

I started searching the net for this error.  The closest references I could find were:

Re: .htaccess files and FrontPage extensions

But no where did I find a solution.

A solution/work-around

My solution was to use Redirect instead of RewriteRule.  In my case, I was doing rules such as this:

RewriteRule     ^rewrite\.htm$  rewrite.html [R=permanent]

This can be just as easily written as:

Redirect permanent  rewrite.htm  http://www.yourwebsite.org/rewrite.html

This solution is appropriate.  The clients sees the same result in both cases.   It’s all pretty much the same as far as I can see from the server logs.  They both result in a 301 result (i.e. the request file is returned to the client along with a notice that the URL has permanently moved).

However, this may not be appropriate in all cases.  If your RewriteRule is quite complex, then this is not a solution for you, and I’m sorry but I don’t know how to you help you.

If you know more, please add your comments.