why is .htaccess not working on live site? - php

Question

I'm needing to rewrite urls to be "pretty" instead of queries: they need to be /kw/blah instead of kw.php?kw=blah. I've tested the code several times with online checkers, and they say it works/is syntactically correct.
The two sites I used to check are: https://htaccess.madewithlove.be (url testing was with /kw/melbourne-web-design and http://www.htaccesscheck.com
# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} blueshiftwebservices\.com [NC]
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} 80
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://blueshiftwebservices.com/$1 [R,L]
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
RewriteRule ^kw/([^/]*)$ landing.php?kw=$1 [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress
I'm getting an error of 404 Page not found only with the pretty url, not the url that contains the query.
The live site definitely refers to the .htaccess file, so I'm lost at what to do?

Answer 1

The rule RewriteRule . /index.php [L] matches all URLs. So you must insert the rule RewriteRule ^kw/([^/]*)$ landing.php?kw=$1 [L] before it.
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
# redirect to https
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} blueshiftwebservices\.com [NC]
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} 80
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://blueshiftwebservices.com/$1 [R,L]
# are you sure you need it?
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
# make it "pretty"
RewriteRule ^kw/([^/]*)$ landing.php?kw=$1 [L]
# process the rest
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>