Hopefully this can help someone in the future, and maybe get incorporated into the FAQ about this here, which I found helpful, but incomplete:
http://xenforo.com/help/friendly-urls/
(edit)Ubuntu 10.04/Apache 2.2
I just went to enable 'Use Full Friendly URLs' and totally broke my site. Links were broken everywhere. First thing I realized was that I had no .htaccess file and renamed the htaccess.txt file in my xenForo directory to .htaccess. This didn't fix the problem, so I thought maybe I didn't even have mod_rewrite enabled. To check that I had to make a php.info file:
Put that file in your webroot and access it with your browser, use [Ctrl + F] to search for "rewrite". If you don't find it, then it is not installed/enabled.
In order to get that installed and working I used the command (as root):
That didn't seem to fix the issue, and that is because default Ubuntu/Apache installs do not have an AllowOverride directive in the configuration. I looked up how to do this right and ran across this article:
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/howto/htaccess.html
That explains the disadvantages of using .htaccess files, with the main argument being that with AllowOverride directives you are telling the server to look for them in each request, and recursively up the file tree, adding lots of unnecessary overhead. Fortunately it explains an alternative that was easy to implement, by simply adding the exact same stuff you would to your .htaccess file to a <Directory> directive in your httpd.conf file instead. Open the .htaccess file that is supplied with xenForo (htaccess.txt if you haven't renamed it) and copy the contents to the clipboard. Now open your httpd.conf file (usually at /var/apache2/) and add these three lines:
In between those two tags, paste the contents of the clipboard (the .htaccess file).
Restart your webserver again:
And you should be good to go with Friendly URLS, using an even better way than .htaccess files =)
http://xenforo.com/help/friendly-urls/
(edit)Ubuntu 10.04/Apache 2.2
I just went to enable 'Use Full Friendly URLs' and totally broke my site. Links were broken everywhere. First thing I realized was that I had no .htaccess file and renamed the htaccess.txt file in my xenForo directory to .htaccess. This didn't fix the problem, so I thought maybe I didn't even have mod_rewrite enabled. To check that I had to make a php.info file:
Code:
#: cat > file1.php
<?php phpinfo(); ?>
[ctrl + C]
In order to get that installed and working I used the command (as root):
Code:
#: a2enmod rewrite
#: /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
That didn't seem to fix the issue, and that is because default Ubuntu/Apache installs do not have an AllowOverride directive in the configuration. I looked up how to do this right and ran across this article:
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/howto/htaccess.html
That explains the disadvantages of using .htaccess files, with the main argument being that with AllowOverride directives you are telling the server to look for them in each request, and recursively up the file tree, adding lots of unnecessary overhead. Fortunately it explains an alternative that was easy to implement, by simply adding the exact same stuff you would to your .htaccess file to a <Directory> directive in your httpd.conf file instead. Open the .htaccess file that is supplied with xenForo (htaccess.txt if you haven't renamed it) and copy the contents to the clipboard. Now open your httpd.conf file (usually at /var/apache2/) and add these three lines:
Code:
<Directory [path_to_your_xenForo_install_in_your_webroot]>
</Directory>
Restart your webserver again:
Code:
#: /etc/init.d/apache2 restart