title: 500 Internal Server Error when using .htaccess with RewriteEngine
body: <p>I am on the shared host <a href="http://bounceweb.com" rel="noreferrer">Bounceweb</a> and I am trying to add some rewrite rules to make my links look prettier.</p>
  
  <p>One of these rules is to make the url: <code>http://mysite.com/upload</code> point to: <code>http://mysite.com/upload.php</code>. I have this in my .htaccess file:</p>
  
  <pre><code>RewriteEngine on
  RewriteRule ^upload$ upload.php
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>but all it's giving me is a 500 Internal Server Error. I looked at my logs and this comes up a lot:</p>
  
  <pre><code>[alert] [client 81.179.29.185] /home/minecraf/public_html/.htaccess: Invalid command '\xef\xbb\xbfRewriteEngine', perhaps misspelled or defined by a module not included in the server configuration
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Does this mean my host doesn't support .htaccess? Pretty lame if they don't. I've already tried changing the permissions of .htaccess to 777 and it doesn't help.</p>
  
  <p>Thanks!</p>