Q:

.htaccess not working for PHP

.htaccess does not respond to RewriteRules. I have created a .htaccess file at the root of my project, and filled it with the below RewriteConditions
RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-l

RewriteRule ^(.+)& index.php?url=1 [NC, L]

But I get false instead of true when I execute the below code in my index.php
<?php
 var_dump(isset($_GET["url"]));

Below is what I have in my /etc/apache2/apache2.conf
 <Directory />
    Options FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride All
    Require all denied
</Directory>

<Directory /usr/share>
    AllowOverride All
    Require all granted
</Directory>

<Directory /var/www/>
    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride All
    Require all granted
</Directory>

I run my server from my folder located in my Home directory rather than /var/www/html
Also, when I access any part of the site localhost:8000/fishes, it still loads the index.php with false displaying
I have been battling this but to no avail, please help guys, what could I be doing wrong.

A:

The reason why it does not work is because I am running PHP outside of apache /var/www/ directory, apparently if I want it to work outside there I will have to set it from/etc/apache2/apache2.conf 

