Problem: with Mod_rewrite, multiview & Apache config Introduction: The website is in french and i had problem with unicode encoding and mod_rewrite within php wihtout multiviews Old server was not handling utf8 correctly (somewhere between PHP, apache mod rewrite or mysql) Updated Server to Ubuntu 11.04 , the process was destructive lost all files in var/www/ (the site was mainly 2 files index.php & static.php) lost the site specific .Htaccess file lost MySQL dbs lost old apache.conf What i have done so far: What works: Setup GNutls for SSL, Listen 443 = port.conf Created 2 Vhosts in one file for :80 and :443 = website.conf Enforce SSL = Redirecting :80 to :443 with a mod_rewrite redirect Tried to set utf-8 everywhere.. Set charset and collation , db connection , mb_settings , names utf-8 and utf8_unicode_ci, everywhere (php,mysql,apache) to be sure to serve files as UTF-8 i enabled multiview renamed index.php.utf8.fr and static.php.utf8.fr With multiview enabled, Multibytes Accents in URL works SSL TLS 1.0 What dont work: With multiview enabled , mod_rewrite works for only one of my rewriterules With multiview Disabled, i loose access to the document root as "Forbidden" With multiview Disabled, i loose Multibytes (single charater accent) The Apache Default server is full of settings. (what can i safely remove ?) these are my configuration files so far :80 Vhost file (this one work you can use this to force redirect to https) RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} LanguagePriority fr :443 Vhost file (GnuTls is working) DocumentRoot /var/www/x ServerName example.com ServerAlias www.example.com <Directory "/var/www/x"> allow from all Options FollowSymLinks +MultiViews AddLanguage fr .fr AddCharset UTF-8 .utf8 LanguagePriority fr </Directory> GnuTLSEnable on GnuTLSPriorities SECURE:+VERS-TLS1.1:+AES-256-CBC:+RSA:+SHA1:+COMP-NULL GnuTLSCertificateFile /path/to/certificate.crt GnuTLSKeyFile /path/to/certificate.key <Directory "/var/www/x/base"> </Directory> Basic .htaccess file AddDefaultCharset utf-8 Options FollowSymLinks +MultiViews RewriteEngine on RewriteRule ^api/$ /index.php.utf8.fr?v=4 [L,NC,R] RewriteRule ^contrib/$ /index.php.utf8.fr?v=2 [L,NC,R] RewriteRule ^coop/$ /index.php.utf8.fr?v=3 [L,NC,R] RewriteRule ^crowd/$ /index.php.utf8.fr?v=2 [L,NC,R] RewriteRule ^([^/]*)/([^/]*)$ /static.php.utf8.fr?VALUEONE=$2&VALUETWO=$1 [L] So my quesiton is whats wrong , what do i have missing is there extra settings that i need to kill from the apache default . in order to be sure all parts are using utf-8 at all time, and that my mod_rewrite rules work with accent Thank you all in advance for your help, I will follow this question closely , to add any needed information.