Just installed EE 2.8.1, haven't renamed the system folder yet and am trying to set up the htaccess file to remove index.php from URLs. When I use the htaccess code recommended in the installation instructions, I get an internal server error. The error log gives an alert:
.htaccess: RewriteRule: cannot compile regular expression '(.?)index\.php/(.*)'\n
Here's the .htacess contents
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
# Removes index.php from ExpressionEngine URLs
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^GET.*index\.php [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/system/.* [NC]
RewriteRule (.*?)index\.php/*(.*) /$1$2 [R=301,NE,L]
# Directs all EE web requests through the site index file
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php/$1 [L]
</IfModule>
Anyone run into this and know how to fix it?
It's on an Apache 1.3.4 server; fresh install, no addons.