mod_rewrite all to index.php in one environment - apache

Question

I know there are a million of questions about this, but I've tried the solutions in other questions and haven't got it to work in my case. I'm trying to redirect everything to index.php:
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^ index.php [L]
</IfModule>
This works in my local environment, but in my staging environment it fails and I get a 404 error. I've checked that mod_rewrite is enabled with phpinfo(). I've tried changing a few things like using ^(.*)$ instead of ^ and using /index.php instead of index.php
What else could be the problem?

Answer 1

Figured it out. It was a problem with the configuration of apache. Whoever set it up for the site I'm working on did it like this in the site's .conf file:
<Directory "/data/path/to/directory">
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
# and a bunch of rewrite rules...
</Directory>
The AllowOverride None prohibits the use of .htaccess. In our local and development environments, the directory structure is different, so this code doesn't even get applied. That's why the .htaccess was working.
To solve the problem I'll either have to change the line mentioned above to AllowOverride All or add another configuration for the website I'm working on like the one above that does what I wanted to do with .htaccess.
Problems like this shouldn't come up for anyone if their environments are configured appropriately, but if anyone does run into a similar situation, check the configuration of the site in apache!