Comments on: Clean URLs Are All the Rage

By: Mike

Mike — Sun, 10 Jul 2005 20:55:16 +0000

Ok, its done. No more extensions. I used this apache rule: RedirectMatch permanent /archives/(.*).html$ http://hellyeahbitch.com/archives/$1 ...and rebuilt every thing. Now if you go to a page with .php, you are redirected to the one with no extension. No linking problems! [ Moving on] I made a few sites that are basically databases with one php file on the end, but for this site, I like having MT generate the static pages instead of doing everything dynamically. That is actually the main reason that I haven't moved to wordpress or something like that.

By: danielcole

danielcole — Sat, 09 Jul 2005 03:06:31 +0000

I switched mt.net over to clean urls a few months ago (away from .php’s). I was having trouble getting my reg. expression correct in the .htaccess until I realized that it’s easier to just pass the entire url argument string to index.php and parse it there.

Now the whole site is database driven and adding a new ‘page’ is just adding a new entry into a mysql table. I can specify page title, icon, and if it’s a public or password-protected page.

There was a problem with having the .htaccess in the root folder and bleeding into other areas of the webserver (test sites, internal stuff, etc). Putting a one-line .htaccess with ‘RewriteEngine off’ turns it off for all url requests for that subfolder and below.

Also realize that a lot of places link to specific pages on your site (random blogs, Google). If you drop the .php extension entirely your 404 Error page will explode. For a while you have to make sure to write your redirect expressions to account for both types of requests. I don’t know how MT organizes files at all, so this may or may not be a problem. On my homegrown site it was a biggie.

By: danielcole

danielcole — Sat, 09 Jul 2005 01:06:31 +0000

I switched mt.net over to clean urls a few months ago (away from .php's). I was having trouble getting my reg. expression correct in the .htaccess until I realized that it's easier to just pass the entire url argument string to index.php and parse it there.

Now the whole site is database driven and adding a new 'page' is just adding a new entry into a mysql table. I can specify page title, icon, and if it's a public or password-protected page.

There was a problem with having the .htaccess in the root folder and bleeding into other areas of the webserver (test sites, internal stuff, etc). Putting a one-line .htaccess with 'RewriteEngine off' turns it off for all url requests for that subfolder and below.

Also realize that a lot of places link to specific pages on your site (random blogs, Google). If you drop the .php extension entirely your 404 Error page will explode. For a while you have to make sure to write your redirect expressions to account for both types of requests. I don't know how MT organizes files at all, so this may or may not be a problem. On my homegrown site it was a biggie.