Posted by Chung Leong on 03/02/06 05:02

joelbyrd@gmail.com wrote:
> I have a people-networking type site in which each user has their own
> profile page, with their user id encoded. So, for example, the web
> address of their page might look like
> "www.example.com/my_profile.php?user_id=fdjkhfh2489298hf298h3s0dhfxj".
> I want the users to be able to choose their own web address that would
> look like "www.example.com/Joel", and then when they type in that
> address, they are automatically redirected to their profile page with
> the more complex address.
>
> I believe mod_rewrite is the solution to this?

Yes, it is.

> Reading a little bit about mod_rewrite, I believe the rule I want is
> something like the following:
>
> RewriteRule ^/(.*) /redirect_user.php?user_name=$1

No, that wouldn't work too well, as it redirect every request to the
script. In general you want your rewrite rules to be as narrow as you
can. The pattern ^/\w+\/?/$ probably makes more sense.

I would also modify my_profile.php so it finds the user based on the
user name instead of doing a redirect to the page with the user id.
Don't really see a reason to do it in two steps.

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