Synology Personal Websites htaccess results in 403 errors - wordpress

Question

Synology Server with DSM 7.1.x (recently updated from DSM 6.x and downgrading back down to DSM 6.x is not recommended by Synology)
Webstation Enabled with HTTP back-end server: Apache HTTP Server 2.4 and PHP:
PHP 8.0
Personal Websites with these settings HTTP back-end server: Apache HTTP Server 2.4 and
PHP: PHP 7.4
Personal Websites use WordPress 5.x or 6.x which require a .htaccess file
Problem: Personal Website .htaccess in /homes/user/www folders causes the 403 error
Could delete .htaccess to stop 403 error but Personal Websites use WordPress which requires .htaccess - cannot just delete this file because some WordPress actions recreates the .htaccess file (such as changing Settings > Permalinks)
Newly created test user case: tmp
homes/tmp/www folder has "users" group with 775 permissions
homes/tmp/www/.htaccess has owner of "username" and group of "users" with 770 permissions
homes/tmp/www/wp-config.php has owner of "username" and group of "users" with 770 permissions
Even with permissions of 777 for ALL files in homes/tmp/www, the 403 error still exists with .htaccess
After deleting the .htaccess and creating/publishing a new page, viewing the new page results in a 404 error.
Default .htaccess lines
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule .* - [E=HTTP_AUTHORIZATION:%{HTTP:Authorization}]
RewriteBase /~username/
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /~username/index.php [L]
</IfModule>
Even if .htaccess has no lines of code at all, the 403 error exists. So just the existence of the .htaccess file regardless of content causes a 403 error.
Anyone have ideas to solve this problem?

Answer 1

Solution I stumbled upon:
Edit the httpd2x.conf for Apache2.x (whichever is chosen for Personal Websites)
Add the following code
UserDir www
<Directory "var/services/homes/*/www">
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
</Directory>
I tried a bunch of stuff and I think the above was the trick.

Answer 2

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule .* - [E=HTTP_AUTHORIZATION:%{HTTP:Authorization}]
RewriteBase /~username/
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /~username/index.php [L]
</IfModule>
It looks like you are using Apache per-user web directories? If that's the case then /~username is not a physical directory (it's an "alias" to your user directory) and your document root is effectively /~username/ (which really messes with root-relative URL-paths).
In which case, your .htaccess should be like this instead:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule .* - [E=HTTP_AUTHORIZATION:%{HTTP:Authorization}]
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . index.php [L]
Note that I've removed the RewriteBase directive altogether.
However, if this is part of the WordPress code block (ie. inside # BEGIN WordPress ... # END WordPress) comment markers then WordPress is going to try and overwrite your changes unless you take additional steps to prevent this.