Why don't internal links on the site work in Open Server? .htaccess?

Question

htaccess

Hi guys! They asked me to make changes to a simple site, essentially in HTML / CSS, but with PHP elements - so I installed Open Server for local work. Understood to the stage that the site opens.

But I click on an internal link, for example "Contacts" = 'contacts' - I get a 403 error. In the Apache debug log I see the following:

applying pattern '.*\\.php$' to uri 'contacts', referer: http://stretto.loc/
RewriteCond: input='D:/OpenServer/domains/stretto.loc/public_html/contacts.php' pattern='-f' => matched, referer: http://stretto.loc/
rewrite 'contacts' -> 'D:/OpenServer/domains/stretto.loc/public_html/contacts.php', referer: http://stretto.loc/
add per-dir prefix: D:/OpenServer/domains/stretto.loc/public_html/contacts.php -> D:/OpenServer/domains/stretto.loc/public_html/D:/OpenServer/domains/stretto.loc/public_html/contacts.php, referer: http://stretto.loc/
strip document_root prefix: D:/OpenServer/domains/stretto.loc/public_html/D:/OpenServer/domains/stretto.loc/public_html/contacts.php -> /D:/OpenServer/domains/stretto.loc/public_html/contacts.php, referer: http://stretto.loc/
internal redirect with /D:/OpenServer/domains/stretto.loc/public_html/contacts.php [INTERNAL REDIRECT], referer: http://stretto.loc/
(20023)The given path was above the root path: [client 127.0.0.1:62943] AH00127: Cannot map GET /contacts HTTP/1.1 to file, referer: http://stretto.loc/

From the last two lines, I understand that there seems to be an extra "/" at the beginning. And also lines 4 and 5 do something superfluous - first adding the path to the file once again, and then removing it, apparently leaving "/".

Here is the .htaccess:

adddefaultcharset utf-8

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.php -f
RewriteRule !.*\.php$ %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.php [QSA,L]

This syntax is a dark forest for me (and I installed Open Server for the first time) ...

What do I need to change in .htaccess or maybe in the server settings so that links are processed correctly?

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

You need to change REQUEST_FILENAME to REQUEST_URI in RewriteRule.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.php -f
RewriteRule !.*\.php$ %{REQUEST_URI}.php [QSA,L]