mod_rewriting an entire site
Using mod_rewrite to redirect all pages to one central PHP page’.
On my site, I decided to use an all-index structure, as that’s how I prefer to do things – it means that the scripting language is more hidden from the end user than if you linked to pages such as “something-bizarre.jsp” and means that if the scripting language used to create the pages was changed the names of the pages wouldn’t have to be.
In using mod_rewrite to modify an entire website, the following points needed to be addressed:
- Images and CSS files should not be rewritten
- Since the only subdomain used by the site is ‘www’, if the user does not enter it then it should be added automatically and visibly for them.
- All versions of a webpage should be automatically and visibly rewritten to a single URL. i.e. ‘www.example.com/somepage/’, ‘example.com/somepage/’, ‘www.example.com/somepage’ and ‘example.com/somepage’ should all resolve to ‘www.example.com/somepage/’
- Once all visible rewriting has been completed, the URL should be invisibly redirected to a master page which is able to interpret the URL which the user requested and serve up the correct content.
The following is what I came up with. Please refer to “mod_rewrite, a beginner’s guide (with examples)” if you need any extra pointers as to what anything means.
###################################################
# Turn the RewriteEngine on. #
###################################################
RewriteEngine on
###################################################
# Add a leading www to domain if one is missing. #
###################################################
# If this rule is used, the rewriting stops here #
# and then restarts from the beginning with the #
# new URL #
###################################################
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]
###################################################
# Do not process images or CSS files further #
###################################################
# No more processing occurs if this rule is #
# successful #
###################################################
RewriteRule \.(css|jpe?g|gif|png)$ - [L]
###################################################
# Add a trailing slash if needed #
###################################################
# If this rule is used, the rewriting stops here #
# and then restarts from the beginning with the #
# new URL #
###################################################
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/[^\.]+[^/]$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://%{HTTP_HOST}/$1/ [R=301,L]
###################################################
# Rewrite web pages to one master page #
###################################################
# /somepage/ => master.php #
# ?page=somepage #
# /somesection/somepage => master.php #
# ?section=somesection #
# &page=somepage #
# /somesection/somesub/somepage/ #
# => master.php #
# ?section=somesection #
# &subsection=somesub #
# &page=somepage #
###################################################
# Variables are accessed in PHP using #
# $_GET['section'], $_GET['subsection'] and #
# $_GET['page'] #
###################################################
# No more processing occurs if any of these rules #
# are successful #
###################################################
RewriteRule ^([^/\.]+)/?$ /master.php?page=$1 [L]
RewriteRule ^([^/\.]+)/([^/\.]+)/?$ /master.php?section=$1&page=$2 [L]
RewriteRule ^([^/\.]+)/([^/\.]+)/([^/\.]+)/?$ /master.php?section=$1&subsection=$2&page=$3 [L]
Source: http://www.workingwith.me.uk/blog/software/open_source/apache/mod_rewriting_an_entire_site