Enabling pretty permalinks in Bitnami WordPress with SSL

January 30, 2019

tl;dr

Edit the /opt/bitnami/apache2/conf/extra/httpd-ssl.conf file and add the directives there. You need to wrap your .htaccess stuff in a <Directory> directive and that will be in turn inside the <VirtualHost> directive.

code

<VirtualHost _default_:443>

#   General setup for the virtual host
DocumentRoot "/opt/bitnami/apps/wordpress/htdocs"
ServerName www.blah.com:443
ServerAdmin admin@blah.com
ErrorLog "/opt/bitnami/apache2/logs/error_log"
TransferLog "/opt/bitnami/apache2/logs/access_log"

<Directory "/opt/bitnami/apps/wordpress/htdocs">
  AllowOverride All
  Options FollowSymLinks

  # BEGIN WordPress
  RewriteEngine On
  RewriteBase /
  RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
  RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
  # END WordPress
</Directory>

</VirtualHost>

Restart Apache afterwards

code

sudo /opt/bitnami/ctlscript.sh restart apache

Bitnami has rewrite module mod_rewrite enabled by default on all their stacks so you don't really need the usual <IfModule> check.

Troubleshooting

Check that mod_rewrite is enabled by making sure it's loaded in Apache conf file

Bitnami includes rewrite module for Apache in all their applications by default.

code

cat /opt/bitnami/apache2/conf/httpd.conf | grep 'mod_rewrite'

code

LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so

If the line has a # at the beginning then it means it is commented out and the module is not being loaded. Edit the file with nano adn remove the # at the beginning of the line.

Make sure that the AllowOverride All and Options FollowSymLinks directives are there. They are required for pretty permalinks to work.
Make sure you have restarted Apache

code

sudo /opt/bitnami/ctlscript.sh restart apache