andy: As I understand things, Apache will not read .htaccess files in a directory unless some AllowOverride directive is enabled for that directory. I tried the following AllowOverride settings for my blog directory with the results noted:
AllowOverride None
Your stats plugin works fine. [I guess this is because Apache does not even look for .htaccess files at all, so your .htaccess file is simply ignored. (Most WordPress servers would not be set this way because fancy permalinks probably would not work.)]
AllowOverride FileInfo (so WordPress permalinks work)
Your stats plugin does NOT work UNLESS I remove the .htaccess file. [I guess this is because Apache now reads the file and finds the Allow statement is not allowed to be overridden and reports an error AND apparently denies all access to *.swf files in the stats directory.]
AllowOverride FileInfo Limit
or
AllowOverride All
Your stats plugin works fine in either case.
I believe one of the latter Apache server configurations is NECESSARY in order for your stats plugin to work as is. I don’t think it is possible to fix this from within the .htaccess file itself. What you need is a conditional statement to check the AllowOverride directive status before the Allow statement and I don’t think such conditional statements exist.
Of course, your .htaccess worked to override the users .htaccess file in the directory above because the Apache configuration had to have been set as indicated above or his .htaccess file would not have worked. But your fix broke it for others because of the (strange) way Apache behaves when it finds an unallowed statement in a .htaccess file.
