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Figure 3-4

As you know, what mod_rewrite basically does is to translate an input string (the URL typed by your

visitor) to another string (a URL that can be processed by your PHP scripts). In this exercise you make it

rewrite

my-super-product.html

to

product.php?product_id=123

.

This exercise, as all the other exercises in this book, assumes that you’ve installed

Apache and PHP as shown in Chapter 1.

Please visit Jaimie Sirovich’s web page dedicated to this book —

http://www

.seoegghead.com/seo-with-php-updates.html

— for updates and additional

information regarding the following code.

httpd.conf versus .htaccess

There are also some subtle differences in the way Apache handles rules for mod_rewrite

in

.htaccess

vs.

httpd.conf

. If for any reason you prefer using

httpd.conf

, you’ll

need to take this into consideration while going through the exercises:

1.

You should place your rewrite rules inside the

<VirtualHost>

element of

the

httpd.conf

or

vhosts.conf

file instead of

.htaccess

.

2.

When working with

htppd.conf

, the slash (

/

) that follows the domain

name in a URL is considered to be part of the URL.

In the next exercise, you are presented this URL rewriting code:

RewriteEngine On

RewriteRule ^my-super-product\.html$ /product.php?product_id=123

When using

httpd.conf

, the rule would need to contain an extra slash:

RewriteEngine On

RewriteRule ^

/

my-super-product\.html$ /product.php?product_id=123

50

Chapter 3: Provocative SE-Friendly URLs

c03.qxd:c03 10:39 50

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