Apparently you’ll get this error in Windows:

Syntax error on line 173 of C:/Program Files/Apache Software Foundation/Apache2.2/conf/vhosts.conf:
DocumentRoot must be a directory

If you have a trailing slash in your VirtualHost configuration for that particular domain.

Ask Apache is chock full of awesomeness but these are the links that immediately jump out.

ErrorDocuments:

List of 57 HTTP Status Codes and Apache htaccess file ErrorDocuments

Redirection:

301 Redirect Cheatsheet – mod_rewrite, javascript, cfm, perl, php, refresh, python

Advanced HTTP Redirection

I posted this previously for another alternative of redirecting users when your pages change.

And this for letting users know something has changed when your pages change.

SEO:

503 Status Code Search Engine SEO

Security:

Security Tips for Securing your website, server, blog using .htaccess

Dave Child ran into this problem a while back when the idiotic Jack Daniels corporation decided to flex its mighty talons.

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} ^GET [NC] # Only rewrite GET requests
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} olddomain\.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [L,R=301]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} olddomain\.com [NC] # Otherwise block
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ - [F]

Redirect all GET requests to new domain (only redirecting GET because POST to old domain is almost certainly automated spam – no genuine users should ever be posting to old domain if it’s been completely redirected). Serve 403 to any other request. — Dave Child

It’s quite rare to find a useful forum post anywhere so I thought I’d make note of some useful information that was passed around.

http://www.webmasterworld.com/apache/3430745.htm

(Click here for an archived copy.)

http://corz.org/serv/tricks/htaccess.php

I’m not entirely sure of the culprit here because on a Unix machine the problem does not exist.  If you are encountering “Error 403: Forbidden” errors try this on a Windows host.

Options +FollowSymLinks

http://www.phpfreaks.com/forums/index.php?topic=159470.0;wap2

The resulting explanation seems fairly solid but it simply cannot be true if it is working on a host without that option.  So, I wonder then if the Unix host has that directive enabled by default in all Virtual Hosts.

Hrmm…