Creating and redirecting a directory

emitind

Hi,

I'm trying to do this system where when a user signs up and a directory is created for their username. When you go to the directory I need it to forward to one central page in a root folder. So basically the folder created is empty - it's created to make the URL look nicer than a load of variables tied onto the root folder page. When they get redirected to the main page, the folder name is used to retrieve the data for that user from a database.

How can I achieve this? Does .htaccess have anything which can do this for all folders apart from ones specified?

I hope this makes sense.

Thanks a lot!

drawmack

yeah this is an htaccess issue and if you dig around in the articles on the main section of this site you'll find the answer. What you're looking to do is generally called search friendly urls

emitind

thanks for your reply. i tried looking, but there are so many articles and don't have that good of an idea of what i am actually looking for 😕

would it be possible to provide a link or even give me an idea how to go about this? i'm really confused right now!

thanks again.

drew010

mod_rewrite will be what you are interested in, that way you dont actually have to create any folders.

http://httpd.apache.org/docs/misc/rewriteguide.html

with this you could invisibly turn something like
http://www.yoursite.com/users/drew010
into
http://www.yoursite.com/mainpage.php?user=drew010

drawmack

http://www.phpbuilder.net/columns/tim19990117.php3?aid=62

http://www.phpbuilder.net/columns/tim20000526.php3?aid=20

emitind

thanks for those links. i read them but i still don't get it! 🙁
what i understand is that a filetype can be changed or something but not a redirect?

i'll clarify what i need: folders (containing no files) which all direct to the same PHP file. However I need to keep the foldername as that is used as a variable to retrieve the right data on the PHP page.

Any other, easier methods? Or am I missing something? :rolleyes:

drew010

mod_rewrite is probably the easiest way to do it, and you wont clutter up the server lots of folders that take up 4k each just to hold no files.

here is a rewrite rule you can put in .htaccess

RewriteEngine On

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php?user=$1 [R]

if you make a folder on your site called users, (yoursite.com/users/) create a .htaccess file in that folder, and put the above code in it, now anytime someone goes to yoursite.com/users/username they are redirected to yoursite.com/index.php?user=username

emitind

how can i divert it to a file in the same directory as the .htaccess? eg. www.site.com/folder-with-htaccess/index.php?user=$username

emitind

i've got this:

RewriteEngine On 

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /1/index\.php?user=$1 [R]

this is in the root folder. when someone goes to any folder in the root it should diverts to /1/index.php?user=foldername.

why doesn't this code work?

secondly, how can i make it so that certain folders do not get redirected (namely the root folder)?

thanks again!

😕

emitind

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