Beware of HostGator

Agreed, utilizing "live chat support" is rarely a good idea. If you're having problems, you might want to contact the BBB, it worked for this guy.

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John Forsythe
Need reliable Drupal hosting?

Most of my customers use HostGator and I usually hear positive reviews.

Andrew

I did open a ticket. About half way down in my original post.

Drupal Indianapolis Web Design

FINALLY!!! Your clue in the last post about temporary urls not working led me to fix this for myself....

Heres what I did to make Clean URLs work on a temporary url (ie the one you work on until the DNS is ready to be changed) on hostgator.

1.) First find out the name of the site that loads when you visit your site at the temporary IP address ie. http://74.56.43.21/~yoursite
In my instance that is http://cutlass.websitewelcome.com/~mysite , copy this address and paste it in your settings.php file as your base URL

2.) Copy and paste the following code into a new .htaccess file and upload

#
# Apache/PHP/Drupal settings:
#

# Protect files and directories from prying eyes.

Order deny,allow
Deny from all

# Set some options.
Options -Indexes
Options +FollowSymLinks

# Customized error messages.
ErrorDocument 404 /index.php

# Set the default handler.
DirectoryIndex index.php

# Override PHP settings. More in sites/default/settings.php
# but the following cannot be changed at runtime.

# PHP 4, Apache 1

php_value magic_quotes_gpc 0
php_value register_globals 0
php_value session.auto_start 0

# PHP 4, Apache 2

php_value magic_quotes_gpc 0
php_value register_globals 0
php_value session.auto_start 0

# PHP 5, Apache 1 and 2

php_value magic_quotes_gpc 0
php_value register_globals 0
php_value session.auto_start 0

# Reduce the time dynamically generated pages are cache-able.

ExpiresByType text/html A1

# Various rewrite rules.

RewriteEngine on

# If your site can be accessed both with and without the prefix www.
# you can use one of the following settings to force user to use only one option:
#
# If you want the site to be accessed WITH the www. only, adapt and uncomment the following:
# RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.example\.com$ [NC]
# RewriteRule .* http://www.example.com/ [L,R=301]
#
# If you want the site to be accessed only WITHOUT the www. , adapt and uncomment the following:
# RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^example\.com$ [NC]
# RewriteRule .* http://example.com/ [L,R=301]

# Modify the RewriteBase if you are using Drupal in a subdirectory and
# the rewrite rules are not working properly.
RewriteBase /~mysite/

# Rewrite old-style URLs of the form 'node.php?id=x'.
#RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
#RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
#RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^id=([^&]+)$
#RewriteRule node.php index.php?q=node/view/%1 [L]

# Rewrite old-style URLs of the form 'module.php?mod=x'.
#RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
#RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
#RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^mod=([^&]+)$
#RewriteRule module.php index.php?q=%1 [L]

# Rewrite rules for static page caching provided by the Boost module
# BOOST START

AddCharset utf-8 .html

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/cache
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/user/login
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/admin
RewriteCond %{HTTP_COOKIE} !DRUPAL_UID
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} ^GET$
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/cache/%{SERVER_NAME}/0/%{REQUEST_URI} -d
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/cache/%{SERVER_NAME}/0/%{REQUEST_URI}/index.html -f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ cache/%{SERVER_NAME}/0/$1/index.html [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/cache
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/user/login
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/admin
RewriteCond %{HTTP_COOKIE} !DRUPAL_UID
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} ^GET$
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/cache/%{SERVER_NAME}/0/%{REQUEST_URI}.html -f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ cache/%{SERVER_NAME}/0/$1.html [L]
# BOOST END

# Rewrite current-style URLs of the form 'index.php?q=x'.
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?q=$1 [L,QSA]

3.) Make sure that the following line reflects the directory that your site is hosted in off the root
RewriteBase /~mysite/

4.) Do the clean URL test and be happy, Clean URLS should now work.

5.) Move on with your life ... at last!

Same here, i'm using drupal with clean url's on HG, and everything works out of the box.