symbolic links for making tidy URI's

[Nick Howes]

Hello,
I was seeing if I could get my website so that I can have simple
addresses to pages like http://www.something.com/cheese or /about, while
having the html files all in the same directory. You can do this by making a
symbolic link (for windows users, the unix version of a shortcut) at
/cheese/index.html or whatever, and that works. But what if the pages I want
to link to are based on GET variables, eg index.php?page=about or
index.php?page=cheese ? I don't think symlinks would work here. Any ideas?

Cheers

 

[Dylan Parry]

I was seeing if I could get my website so that I can have simple
addresses to pages like http://www.something.com/cheese or /about, while
having the html files all in the same directory. You can do this by making a
symbolic link (for windows users, the unix version of a shortcut) at
/cheese/index.html or whatever, and that works. But what if the pages I want
to link to are based on GET variables, eg index.php?page=about or
index.php?page=cheese ? I don't think symlinks would work here. Any ideas?

Read up on Apache Mod Rewrite. This does exactly what you are looking for.

 

[Toby A Inkster]

Read up on Apache Mod Rewrite. This does exactly what you are looking for.

Also into "Options +MultiViews".

 

[Nick Howes]

ideas?

Read up on Apache Mod Rewrite. This does exactly what you are looking for.

Aha. How much server access will I need to do this? Will I basically need to
be running the server myself or is this at all possible using a hosted
server to which I have SSH access?

Thanks

 

[Dylan Parry]

Aha. How much server access will I need to do this? Will I basically
need to be running the server myself or is this at all possible using a
hosted server to which I have SSH access?

You need only the ability to use .htaccess files, nothing more, nothing
less. Any paid host should allow you to use these, not so sure about free
ones though...

 

[Nick Howes]

You need only the ability to use .htaccess files, nothing more, nothing
less. Any paid host should allow you to use these, not so sure about free
ones though...

Great I'll read into it. Thanks guys.

 

[Toby A Inkster]

You need only the ability to use .htaccess files, nothing more, nothing
less. Any paid host should allow you to use these, not so sure about free
ones though...

It also assumes though that mod_rewrite is installed. This is a fairly
safe assumption though as it is more or less standard.