Two most common causes of this behavior are:
-
mod_rewrite not enabled
sudo a2enmod rewrite && sudo service apache2 restart
-
AllowOverride
is set to None, set it to All, assuming Apache2.4sudo nano /etc/apache2/apache2.conf
search for <Directory /var/www/>
and change AllowOverride None
to AllowOverride All
, then save the file and restart apache