Hosting Provider refuses mod_rewrite ?

[Anon]

I have come to the conclusion that mod rewrite would help my php & mysql built website (www.reviewcentre.com) to be indexed by search engine spiders properly.

However, my virtual hosting provider (www.webfusion.co.uk) refuses to provide this facility because :

"URL rewriting is disallowed because it requires FollowSymlinks, which is a security risk"

Is this true ? What is the deal with FollowSymlinks ?

[Anon]

This is stright from the mod_Rewrite documentation at Apache.org:

http://www.apache.org/docs/mod/mod_rewrite.html

Note: To enable the rewriting engine for per-directory configuration files you need to set RewriteEngine On'' in these files andOptions FollowSymLinks'' must be enabled. If your administrator has disabled override of FollowSymLinks for a user's directory, then you cannot use the rewriting engine. This restriction is needed for security reasons.

That sucks... I use mod_rewrite extensivenly on my site, but I also admin the server myself =)
Good luck.