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Testing mod_rewrite

1.

Create a file named

product.php

in your

seophp

folder, and add this code to it:

<?php

// display product details

echo ‘You have selected product #‘ . $_GET[‘product_id’];

?>

2.

Test your simple PHP script by loading

http://seophp.example.com/product.php?product_

id=3

. The result should resemble Figure 3-4.

3.

Create a file named

.htaccess

in your

seophp

folder, and add the following lines to it. Their

functionality is explained in the section that follows.

RewriteEngine On

# Translate my-super.product.html to /product.php?product_id=123

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

Here’s a little detail that’s worth a mention. The

.htaccess

file is technically a file with an empty

name, and the

htaccess

extension. Depending on the settings of your Windows system, this file

may not be easily visible in Windows Explorer.

4.

Switch back to your browser again, and this time load

http://seophp.example.com/

my-super-product.html

. If everything works as it should, you should get the output

that’s shown in Figure 3-5.

If you get a server error at this point, most probably the mod_rewrite module isn’t correctly enabled.

Make sure you’ve restarted the Apache server after enabling mod_rewrite in

httpd.conf

. Open the

error.log

file from the Apache logs directory to read details about the error.

Figure 3-5

51

Chapter 3: Provocative SE-Friendly URLs

c03.qxd:c03 10:39 51

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