.htaccess not working on my Ubuntu 14.04 Distribution - apache

Question

I have just configured my LAMP stack on my Ubuntu 14.04 distribution and want to set .htaccess up to serve a website.
I followed the tutorial https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-use-the-htaccess-file and configured a virtual host for my domain, however I am still unable to use the .htaccess file in my projects root, whenever I try to serve a page I get a 404 error.
The .conf file for my domain looks like:
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin alexmk92#live.co.uk
ServerName alexsims.me
ServerAlias www.alexsims.me
DocumentRoot /var/www/alexsims.me
<Directory />
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride None
</Directory>
<Directory /var/www/alexsims.me>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
allow from all
</Directory>
ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>
I tried to change AllowOverride None to AllowOverride All but that caused an internal 500 error even after enabling mod_rewrite.
Regards,
Alex.
EDIT: .htaccess contents
#Force www:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^alexsims.me [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.alexsims.me/$1 [L,R=301,NC]
#--- Rewrite PHP files clean URL
RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^([A-Za-z0-9-]+)$ ?page=$1 [NC,L]
RewriteRule ^([A-Za-z0-9-]+)/([A-Za-z0-9-]+)$ ?page=$1&id=$2 [NC,L]

Answer 1

I have same issue with Ubuntu 15.10.
I solved this way.
First you need to enable rewrite module:
sudo a2enmod rewrite
sudo gedit /etc/apache2/apache2.conf
and replace
<Directory /var/www/>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride None
Require all granted
</Directory>
With:
<Directory /var/www/>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
Require all granted
</Directory>
And finally
sudo service apache2 reload
Actually what is difference between restart and reload !
restart= stop + start
reload = remain running + re-read configuration files.
We have changed configuration so we need to reload configuration.
It should help someone as I have wasted 4 hours :)

Answer 2

Try
Require all granted
in place of
Order allow,deny
allow from all
See the upgrade documentation for more info:
In 2.2, access control based on client hostname, IP address, and other
characteristics of client requests was done using the directives
Order, Allow, Deny, and Satisfy.
In 2.4, such access control is done in the same way as other
authorization checks, using the new module mod_authz_host. The old
access control idioms should be replaced by the new authentication
mechanisms, although for compatibility with old configurations, the
new module mod_access_compat is provided.

Answer 3

AllowOverride None
That's your problem, right there. The 500 error you're getting could mean that your .htaccess file is malformed - start
See http://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/mod/core.html#allowoverride

Answer 4

You should check if the directives you use in .htaccess are enabled.
For example if you use RewriteEngine you should have apache module rewrite enabled:
cat /etc/apache2/mods-available/rewrite.load
a2enmod rewrite
service apache2 restart
For ExpiresActive directive you should enable apache module expires:
cat /etc/apache2/mods-available/expires.load
a2enmod expires
service apache2 restart
etc.