Mod rewrite, internal server error

If you're facing strange internal server errors with very simple rewrite rules in your .htaccess. Check your <directory></directory> tags in your apache configuration file for this line:

Options Indexes FollowSymLinks

FollowSymLinks is the culprit in this case. After doing a number of searches I was surprised that almost all articles said this directive is necessary for mod rewrite to work! This is actually true, but it seems to cause trouble when included inside the directory tags. The alternative is to add this directive to the .htaccess file or outside of the directory tags using this form:

Options +FollowSymLinks