The Zeus server is a popular alternative to the standard Apache set-up and is being used by many small hosting companies.
Unfortunately the Zeus doesn’t support .htaccess files which are required to make your site’s URLs look “pretty”.
The file that you need to create is called rewrite.script and is Zeus’ equivalent to Apache’s .htaccess file.
The .htaccess File
The normal .htaccess file that ships with WordPress looks like this:
[gist id=8143156 file=code-snippet-1.txt]
Unfortunately Zeus uses a different method of replacing URLs as we’ll see next.
The rewrite.script File
[gist id=8143156 file=code-snippet-2.txt]
Copy the above code into a file called rewrite.script and upload it to your WordPress root folder (the same folder that contains wp-config.php).
If your WordPress site in installed in a sub folder off the root, modify line 27 and include the folder to the path before /index.php.
Next you will have to go into the WordPress Settings > Permalinks and save your permalink choice again. This will force WordPress to rebuild the permlinks for the site.
You can safely delete the .htaccess file from the remote site as it is no longer needed.
The Caveat
The only caveat with the above script is that URL’s will contain index.php in them, so they are not completely the same and as “nice” as under Apache.
e.g. http://www.mydomain.com/index.php/contact-us/
A small price to pay for some additional SEO juice from your new Zeus server.
If anyone knows how to modify the above script to remove index.php from the URL, please let me know.
Ah.. you can do the below for removing index.php from URLs.
Go to the WordPress settings > Permalinks and update that to a custom structure permalink as below
/%category%/%postname%/
This looks great. One problem I’m having is getting my host to recognise the rewrite.script file. I hover over the file and it says ‘Unknown file type’. Could this be to do with me using regular notepad when creating the file? Forgive the noob.