Mod Rewrite Assistance

[Emancipator]

Ola,

I have just learned how to do this whole mod rewrite deal just got started yesterday with some pretty good success, here is my Q for you smart folks.

I would like to turn this

http://www.moviesonline.ca/movie_details.php?movie=Dawn%20of%20the%20Dead

into this

http://www.moviesonline.ca/DawnoftheDead/

No spaces, no punctuation.... doable?

[MarkB]

You could do Dawn-of-the-Dead with mod_rewrite and str_replace...

[Emancipator]

have an htaccess example?

[r2d2]

In terms of SEO, MarkB's suggestion would be better, because Google will see them as separate words rather than a bit of gibberish (in Google's 'eyes').

'Fraid I dont know how to do it with mod-rewrite though, I would use PHP.

[intelliot]

I can do it. It'll take a little time and a combination of mod_rewrite and PHP. Let me know if you're interested (still looking for the solution) otherwise I won't waste my time:)

BTW I will be doing as MarkB suggested (hyphens to replace spaces)

P.S. Google recently stated (http://www.googlecommunity.com/about625.html) in their blog that hyphens are better than underscores.

[Emancipator]

indeed hyphens are better then "_".

Not being familiar with making urls "spiffy" I want to use a method that will make it so google SEES the url correctly.

Ie, if I make it www.moviesonline.ca/zombiemovies.html I want google to see that and not gibberish, or just get confused.

Anybody willing to show me the best way i am gratefull for the time.

[intelliot]

The best (and easier) way is to use mod_rewrite and replace spaces with hyphens. so that might be zombie-movies.html

[Emancipator]

can you show me an example intelliot? very green to mod re-write.

[intelliot]

I'll spend some time to write you a few rewrite rules and report back.

[intelliot]

Example .htaccess file (untested)


RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^movie-([a-zA-Z0-9-]*)\?$ movie_details.php?movie=$1


This will make:
moviesonline.ca/movie-Dawn-of-the-Dead
the equivalent of:
moviesonline.ca/movie_details.php?movie=Dawn-of-the-Dead

In movie_details.php you will want to str_replace the hyphens with spaces. Make sure it's backwards-compatible for people using the old URLs.

[Emancipator]

Thanks Elliot. Going to test it out right now. VERY much appreciated....