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Full Version: Installation error 500 with .htaccess - is it safe to remove?
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Hi -- new user here and I am testing out MyBB and during installation I ran into a problem with the .htaccess file in the base directory of the MyBB installation. I was getting 500 errors and the installer wouldn't load. So I edited the .htaccess file chunk by chunk to get it to work until there was basically nothing left, and then the installer seemed to work.

So now I have the forum installed and running fine (and it's great forum software - hats off to the developers!) -- but I haven't put it into production yet since I'm concerned my installation is vulnerable because it's missing that first .htaccess file.

BTW, the other .htaccess file which is located in admin/backups/ is still there... it's just the base .htaccess file that I removed.

Is this a cause for concern?

And what did the base .htaccess file really do?

From my non-IT reading of it, it looks like it:

1 - does something with security filtering, which I don't understand

2 - beautifies the URLs for search engines with rewrites which I don't need

3 - compresses things with GZIP, which would be nice, but I guess I don't absolutely need

4 - and the last thing is something with error.log, which I don't understand

So I just want to make sure my MyBB installation is safe and secure, but it won't work with the .htaccess file...

Any thoughts or suggestions?
It will be fine without it, it's an optional file and not essential, however you'd probably want to look into why it was throwing a 500 error as it's all pretty standard stuff, so there may be something strange in your Apache configuration. It's possible AllowOverride is disabled in your Apache configurtion which means .htaccess files are not allowed.
(2023-03-08, 12:56 PM)Matt Wrote: [ -> ]It will be fine without it, it's an optional file and not essential, however you'd probably want to look into why it was throwing a 500 error as it's all pretty standard stuff, so there may be something strange in your Apache configuration. It's possible AllowOverride is disabled in your Apache configurtion which means .htaccess files are not allowed.

Thank you -- I will check on the AllowOverride, but I believe it is enabled. But I do think there is something else strange with my Apache config, though, and it's beyond my control with the hosting set up I'm using unfortunately, but I'll dig in some more.

However, since it's not essential, I guess I won't stress out about it too much. Do you think I can go live with the forum?

BTW, I did read the security guide -- https://docs.mybb.com/1.8/administration...rotection/ -- and I will do a few more tweaks, like hide the admin URL, etc...

But in general, I stuck with the simple default configuration of everything (except that troublesome htaccess file), so please let me know if you think it's safe enough to go live with!