When people think of .htaccess configuration, the first thing that might pop into their minds is URL manipulation with mod_rewrite. But they’re often frustrated by mod_rewrite’s complexity.
With this Mod_Rewrite Simulator you can:
- Define routes in the admin panel
- Easily transform ugly, cryptic URLs into what are known as “friendly URLs”
- Manage all your URLs from one single location
- Manipulate and test your URLs on the fly
- Make your website more search engine friendly
- Make your website more secure by transforming your URLs
This script helps you to define unique urls for your website without editing your .htaccess files.
How to Use – Quick Guide
Below you will find a small example of how to use this script. In the zip is an extended help file with more information. This is just to show how easy it is to use this script.
After installing the script by just copying the package into your project. Login into the admin panel and starting setting your rules.
There are three fields that needs to be filled when adding a rule.
Example:
^cash/?$ money.php [L]
1. Expression: This is where you insert your regular expressions. A regular expression is basically a small piece of code that checks for patterns. The pattern can range from a single character that matches to absolutely everything.
In the example above, the Expression Pattern is
^cash/?$
. What happened is that the server will check the URL of every request to the site to see if this pattern matches. If it does, then Apache will swap the URL of the request for the “Redirect” section that follows.
To learn more about regular expression use this link
http://www.cheatography.com/davechild/cheat-sheets/regular-expressions/
2. Redirect: The redirect is the URL that is substituted for the request. If the pattern above matches the request, Apache uses this URL instead of the requested URL .
In the example above the redirect is money.php
3.Flag: “Flags”, tell Apache how to apply the rule. In the above example, the flag is L. This stands for Last rule. Meaning as soon as this flag is read, no other following rules are processed.
You can find more information about regular expression and mod_rewrite here.
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/misc/rewriteguide.html