.htaccess generated for permalinks can cause Server 500 error

[jamesvl]

On some web hosts (see below for specifics), the .htaccess generated can cause a Server 500 error - the .htaccess file has a parse problem.

This happened when trying to add the %category% tag to the beginning of the permalink structure. It did not happen when left off:

/%category%/%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%/
generated an .htaccess file that causes the 500 error
while the .htaccess file generated by
/%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%/
did not cause the error.

The problem turned out to be the syntax of the last line of the .htaccess file:
RewriteRule ^{(.+})/?$ /index.php?category_name=$1 [QSA]}

When I changed it to
RewriteRule ^{([a-zA-Z0-9_]{1,})/?$ /index.php?category_name=$1 [QSA]
(which *should* be the semantic equivalent), the Server 500 error went away the behavior worked as expected.}

[jamesvl]

Forgot to mention:

WordPress version: 2004-09-29 nightly

[jamesvl]

One more thing: the rewrite rule doesn't work for categories with a '-' in them. It needs to be changed to:

RewriteRule ^{([a-zA-Z0-9_-]{1,})/?$ /index.php?category_name=$1 [QSA]}

for it to work.

[anonymousbugger]

RewriteRule ^{(.+)/?$ /index.php?category_name=$1 [QSA]
leads to unlimited rewrite loop ?
then all images, styles etc. links will be passwd to category_name}

[anonymousbugger]

Maybe solution would be
RewriteRule ^{([a-zA-Z0-9_-]+)/?$ /index.php?category_name=$1 [QSA]}

[ryan]

​http://wordpress.org/pipermail/cvs_wordpress.org/2004-October/000604.html