Considering most people are probably on shared hosting, and hosts like to disable random things for their various nefarious reasons (in the name of security, usually), I would say keep on supporting both if possible.
I know DreamHost, for one, has it turned off.
bbPress needs the internal rewrite engine that WordPress has.
Multiviews is unreliable and availability is inconsistent.
_ck_: hear hear!
phreakymonkey: Dreamhost has what turned off, mod_rewrite or MultiViews?
I’m going to stick this to the front of the forums for a few days to get as much reaction as possible.
Using .htaccess is more or less the standard now… any host that turns off .htaccess rewrites is surely going to turn off multiviews as well, so there’s very little benefit to keeping both.
Dreamhost does allow mod_rewrite. And technically they do support Multiviews, but as a .htaccess hack.
However. I remember having terrible trouble trying to configure BBPress to use Multiviews, because it appeared to work, but didn’t on certain pages. I ended up manually adding mod_rewrite.
As an aside, in automating anything like this, keep in mind that people like to do strange things with their directories. One of the annoyances of WordPress is that it assumes almost complete control of the layout of all directories below where it is installed.
chrishajer: Ah, sorry. mod_rewrite
timskii: I could have sworn they had it turned off at some point, but maybe I am misremembering. The point is that hosters tend to do stuff like that (often without warning), so as robust a solution as possible would be ideal, naturally.
*I’m a designer, not a coder, so I’m mostly talking out of my ass.
HowToGeek: I wonder if that’s really true. I’d like to believe it is, but I wonder if there are really hosts that allow the MultiViews directive in an .htaccess file, but don’t allow mod_rewrite. I’d like to believe it’s true so that MultiViews goes away and bbPress gets proper rewriting via mod_rewrite, the sooner the better. And have bbPress generate the rewrite rules then create or edit the .htaccess file automatically, just like WordPress, while you’re at it.
Can you clarify the impact of disabling MultiViews? Will this impact only bbPress content on a site, or do you need it turned off for the whole site?
I like to mix WordPress, bbPress, and plain content for some images, PDF manual downloads, etc., and really need content negotiation/MultiViews supported in directories outside of WP/bbPress.
And why is Mod_Rewrite better than MultiViews for bbPress?
This would not impact anything other than bbPress, it’s just a question of choosing one methodology to support pretty URLs.
MultiViews could still be enabled on the server, it’s just a question of whether bbPress uses it or not.
Mod_Rewrite is better for a couple of reasons. For a start it is better supported, and it is also a lot more flexible. We are thinking about running all requests through a single page (index.php) just like WordPress. This is called a front controller, and is not as easily achieved with MultiViews.
There is also the desire to reduce the amount of support traffic around this topic and standardising on one approach may help that.
> the desire to reduce the amount of support traffic
That’s the best reason right there. Convert to a front controller, mod_rewrite and create the rewrite rules automagically, like WordPress, and 1/3 of the posts on this forum would never have happened.
For me, mod_rewrite is the standard… I just never heard about MultiViews 
I begun programming php things since 5 years, even if I don’t do it professionaly
i wish i knew enough to offer an opinion. i’ve known about mod_rewrite for years from trying to configure drupal and wordpress. never heard of/used multiviews… hope that helps.
For those using a 1and1.com hosting package, try adding..
Options -MultiViews
to the top of the .htaccess file, and append the mod_rewrite stuff after it. I guess with their shared serving packages, the MultiViews just goes nutty (apparently it’s enabled, though), and needs to be turned off before using mod_rewrite. They actually document this behavior at http://faq.1and1.com/dedicated_servers/managed_server/3.html
I guess this means I’m in favor of dropping MultiViews, though not fervently.
Definitely drop MultiViews
I like multiviews, use it for WP too, write access to the .htaccess file will be a problem for many forums on shared hosting accounts (because a lot of them are not secure)
I too vote to drop multiviews. However, if enough people depend on this, could permalinks be made pluggable so that a multiviews plugin could be written? If that’s too much work, that’s OK with me, just suggesting it as a compromise solution…
On Multiviews: Never heard of it until I first installed bbPress. If mof_rewrite would work out of the box (i.e.: if bbPress would create the file or dump the necessary content) I wouldn’t need MultiViews.
Here is one aspect I’d like to through in: URL Customization/Localization.
When localizing URLs, it’s very easy to do this via editing of mod_rewrite rules. All my bbPress installations are in german language, thus I want german URLs.
When changing the wording in URLs, e.g. from “forum” to “board” or “topic” to “idea” etc., same thing – just edit the rewrite rules.
How easy would it be to customize URLs with MultiViews in effect? Without having looked into the implementation, I would guess that it requires code changes.
If URL customization is easier in mod_rewrite, please drop MultiViews. Otherwise, please document how URL customization can be done using MultiViews.
@marians
You’ve identified another reason that I had forgotten about. URL customisation that you are talking about is close to impossible under MultiViews.
Based on all these comments I think we will be dropping it. Thanks for the input everyone.
