title: What's wrong with this mod_rewrite statement?
body: <p>I need to replicate the functionality of <code>mod_alias</code> which I can't use directly because I'm on shared hosting, and Alias statements don't work in .htaccess.</p>
  
  <p>What I want to achieve is essentially</p>
  
  <pre><code>Alias /manual /www/customer/some_other_dir/manual
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I am trying mod_rewrite:</p>
  
  <pre><code>RewriteRule ^/manual/(.*) /www/customer/some_other_dir/manual/%1?%{QUERY_STRING} [L]
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>this will never match any calls to <code>www.example.com/manual</code>.</p>
  
  <p>Why not? What am I doing wrong?</p>