Questions About .htaccess Files

Hi all,

Everyone on here has always been super helpful so I figured instead of continuing to scratch my head about this I would ask here... So here's the deal : I've tried setting up different types of .htaccess files over the last few months, nothing huge or anything as I haven't had a profound need for them at this point, but it seems like any time I try to use any form of .htaccess syntax my webpages error out with an 'Internal Server Error' it could just be the syntax I typed was incorrect the 3- 4 time's I have tried so far but I have a decent level of understanding and experience with .htaccess files so I suppose this is my question. Is there something I need to configure under templates // plans to enable .htaccess functions (or even specific ones) on a virtual server? The last one I tried was a simple 301 redirect and I receieved the same Internal Server Error message... if you need me to generate logs I can do that but I am thinking this may just be a configuration error?

Thanks! Meabert