As the final release of WordPress 2.5 fast approaches, I’ve been having a lot of fun playing around with 2.4-bleeding which has since become WP 2.5 Beta. Since the changes have been coming fast and furious these last few weeks I’m sure glad I use a Subversion client to connect to the WordPress Subversion Repository - it provides for a much simpler and faster method for keeping up to date. Running WordPress in a local environment I prefer to use Xampp, a robust open-source application that will install Apache webserver and MySQL database on your PC with complete access via phpMyAdmin.

Although Xampp is my favourite method of running WordPress locally, there was always a minor little detail that irritated me to no end. In order to use fancy permalinks you of course need mod_rewrite (an Apache module that rewrites permalinks on the fly) enabled otherwise you end up with index.php in all of your permalinks. I hated this. Naturally mod_rewrite is disabled by default. Despite my best efforts in trying to figure out how to enable mod_rewrite in Xampp I failed miserably. I searched the Apache Friends web site with no success. I searched the Xampp Forums, half of which is in German, but came up with nothing. Undaunted I decided to take matters into my own hands and go through the installation files rather meticulously. My labours were rewarded.

For those of you running Xampp 1.6.6a on Windows and unable to figure out how to enable mod_rewrite the fix is simple. Assuming you have installed Xampp in root (which you should) navigate to,

C:\xampp\apache\conf\httpd.conf

Open up httpd.conf in notepad and look for this line.

#LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so

Uncomment it so that it reads,

LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so

Next, search for AllowOverride None and change it to AllowOverride All. Once you restart Apache you will be able to enable fancy permalinks without the index.php appendage.