Apologies for the long message, but I am not particularly technical, and I don't want to miss anything important or helpful to resolving my issue.

I've just had to migrate my C5 website from its previous 1&1 server, used by the original dev agency that built the site, to a new 1&1 account, due to their closure. Migration of the web files and the MySQL database has gone fine, and the config file has been updated, but 1&1 support tell me that the site wont work currently because the '.htaccess' file needs altering, and I've no idea what to change.

I've opened the file in a text editor and there's not a lot of information in it, so I'm hoping it is something straightforward to anyone with knowledge of these things. I also have an excerpt on email (see below), which may help shed some light. I believe it's summing up comments about the .htaccess file from the original developer (who unfortunately I'm no longer able to get in touch with).

'Aside from the rewrite conditions there are only a few additional elements to the .htaccess file. Some scripts were added to override a couple of PHP settings, as well as some performance related elements including compression, expired headers and entity tags, which is general good practice.'

I've also been advised to start by stripping the file right back to the basics (whatever they are) and only including the required rewrite rules for C5 (again not sure what these are), and then build up from there. On top of this I've been told that 'most blocks include a check for the required module, the compression doesn’t so I suggest stripping this out first.'

However, as I literally have no idea what I'm doing, I obviously don't want to alter anything myself in the file unless I'm told exactly what to do. Maybe I need to hire a developer, but again it seems silly to do this if it is something that takes a few minutes with some guidance.

Can anyone help me? I can supply the file if that's not a bad idea for some security reason.

Thanks