Does OpenLiteSpeed support Apache .htaccess rewrites?
I have been getting some conflicting information - official OpenLiteSpeed pages say both that:
- OpenLiteSpeed supports Apache rewrites, and
- OpenLiteSpeed does not support .htaccess
A bit confused...what are LiteSpeed Tech trying to pull here?
Actually, both statements are true and not contradictory.
.htaccess files are not supported, but you can copy the rewrite rules from the .htaccess and paste into OpenLiteSpeed admin console:
the post is old, here a update to this subject. If you found this post after me...
V1.4.38 2018-9-10 Server Core
[New Feature] Added ‘Auto Load from .htaccess’ server and virtual host level setting to auto load .htaccess files included in the configured context if the ‘Rewrite Rules’ setting does not already use the “rewriteFile” directive.
more... please scroll down in this post
Openlitespeed does not support .htaccess rewrites out-of-the-box (like they claim) which is one of the biggest reasons their marketing campaigns are dishonest. (They repeatedly claim that OLS is easier to setup for applications like WordPress than eg. Nginx or Apache.)
Like Apache, the main configuration file can technically do anything your local .htaccess can do, and using multiple .htaccess files on virtual hosts slows down Apache (and also Openlitespeed).
To get local .htaccess working on Openlitespeed you first must generate those files AND then also point to those files within each virtual host AND ensure correct permissions. If you fail to do this, your websites might crash (fatal errors and/or 404 errors like this). Plus, you must reboot the Litespeed server every time you change .htaccess rules.
Litespeed's targeting of WordPress users (and misleading marketing) in particular has resulted in many system admins to migrate to OLS only to discover these problems after the fact.
And for the record, Nginx/Caddy don't have to worry about this stuff because .htaccess is not supported, and all your configuration is centralized (and users can't break it).