mod_rewrite for Apache

Hi

I’m trying to follow along with this guide How To Set Up mod_rewrite for Apache on Ubuntu 14.04

I get to ‘Step 3 — Setting Up .htaccess’

I run this command

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default.conf

Which opens 000-default.conf

The guide says

Inside that file, you will find the <VirtualHost *:80> block on line 1. Inside of that block, add the following block:

/etc/apache2/sites-available/default
<Directory /var/www/html>
                Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
                AllowOverride All
                Order allow,deny
                allow from all
</Directory>

The guide then says

Your file should now match the following. Make sure that all blocks are properly indented.

and it shows this code:

/etc/apache2/sites-available/default
<VirtualHost *:80>
    <Directory /var/www/html>

        . . .

    </Directory>

    . . .
</VirtualHost>

The instruction in the previous step says put all the code inside the the <VirtualHost *:80> block. Yet the example shows part of the code /etc/apache2/sites-available/default is outside the <VirtualHost *:80> block.

Confused?

After following the guide, 000-default.conf looks like this:

<VirtualHost *:80>
        /etc/apache2/sites-available/default
        <Directory /var/www/html>
                Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
                AllowOverride All
                Order allow,deny
                allow from all
        </Directory>
        # The ServerName directive sets the request scheme, hostname and port that
        # the server uses to identify itself. This is used when creating
        # redirection URLs. In the context of virtual hosts, the ServerName
        # specifies what hostname must appear in the request's Host: header to
        # match this virtual host. For the default virtual host (this file) this
        # value is not decisive as it is used as a last resort host regardless.
        # However, you must set it for any further virtual host explicitly.
        #ServerName www.example.com

        ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
        DocumentRoot /var/www/html

        # Available loglevels: trace8, ..., trace1, debug, info, notice, warn,
        # error, crit, alert, emerg.
        # It is also possible to configure the loglevel for particular
        # modules, e.g.
        #LogLevel info ssl:warn

        ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
        CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined

        # For most configuration files from conf-available/, which are
        # enabled or disabled at a global level, it is possible to
        # include a line for only one particular virtual host. For example the
        # following line enables the CGI configuration for this host only
        # after it has been globally disabled with "a2disconf".
        #Include conf-available/serve-cgi-bin.conf
</VirtualHost>

# vim: syntax=apache ts=4 sw=4 sts=4 sr noet

Restart the server with this: sudo service apache2 restart

I get an error message, plus my website shows a 500 internal error:

Job for apache2.service failed because the control process exited with error code.
See "systemctl status apache2.service" and "journalctl -xe" for details.

Not sure what that means, but I’m pretty sure the text I saved in 000-default.conf is wrong.

If I delete this and restart the server, no error message and I can access my website:

 /etc/apache2/sites-available/default
        <Directory /var/www/html>
                Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
                AllowOverride All
                Order allow,deny
                allow from all
        </Directory>

What am I doing wrong?