[landing]

Hi,

Some pages on one of my websites have lengthy URLs.

mydomain.com/resources/index.php?page=begginers

I would like to allow users to visit mydomain.com/beginners, and have this redirected to the above URL.

I've seen this done on sites before but I'm unsure how. I think it's a htaccess thing. Could someone show me an example of how to acheive this? I want to have many 'shortcut' URL's.


Thanks in advance

[duesi]

You can do this with mod_rewrite, which you can turn on in a .htaccess file (if your provider allows this).

For example, I have a page called http://www.swissbytes.de/tiki/tiki-i...rmonesAndWater, but I want the user to access it like
http://www.swissbytes.de/hormone or
http://www.swissbytes.de/hormones

This is what I do:

Code:

# Turn the engine on
RewriteEngine on

# Rewrite
RewriteRule ^hormones?/?$ http://www.swissbytes.de/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=HormonesAndWater [R]

You see that a RewriteRule consists of 2 parts: the pattern (which tells apache if the rule applies) and the action.

Here the pattern sais:
if the url starts (^) with "hormone" potentially followed by "s" (because of the ?), potentially followed by "/" (another ?) and then ends ($), fire this rule.
The Rule then sais which page to redirect to, [R] sends a 302 Code back to the browser, so it knows that the page has moved.

Have Fun!

[landing]

Superb. Thanks duesi.

I'm getting a server configuration error after uploading a .htaccess file, and I can't actually see the htaccess file in my FTP. Is this an indication my server doesn't allow them?

[duesi]

For the first Problem, get a decent FTP program like
http://filezilla.sourceforge.net/ and make sure to "show hidden files", because the leading dot of .htaccess means its a hidden file.

Its possible that your provider does not support it, but an error on your side is also an option.

Put just

Code:

RewriteEngine on

in the file, if this does work, your provider shoudl support it.

Cheers!

[landing]

Thanks again. I've been informed that my server does support it, so it may be an error my end.

I'll give it another go later on and let you know.