When you want to install a new Drupal 7 in a shared server or some web hosts, specially those concerned with security settings, there is a good chance that all you get is a “500 internal server error”. This is usually due to the .htaccess file included with the installation, and more precisely to these lines:
# Follow symbolic links in this directory.
Options +FollowSymLinks |
Some web hosts tighten up security settings and now forbid +FollowSymLinks option in .htaccess. This causes an 500 error when accesing the site.
The fix is quite simple. Just replace +FollowSymLinks with +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch. So edit the lines above to this:
# Follow symbolic links in this directory. # comment this one... # Options +FollowSymLinks # add this new line... Options +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch |
The issue should be fixed.
Please note that there is not just one .htacess file in your Drupal 7 site. There is one in / and usually there are other .htaccess files that must be modified too, for instance in sites/default/files. You must change that one too or every image that you upload to your Drupal 7 site won’t be rendered…
Discussion about this topic available here: http://drupal.org/node/1269780