[RESOLVED] mod_rewrite help please

blackhorse

Right now, the default set up is

if the url is http://www.example.com/test (or any other names here), it will look for http://www.example.com/test/index.html or http://www.example.com/test/index.php etc.. If no index.html or index.php found in http://www.example.com/test/, then give page not found error.

Works fine so far.

Now, my New request.

Url is still http://www.example.com/test (test could be any other names).

First, as the default set up already did, the url would look for

http://www.example.com/test/index.html or http://www.example.com/test/index.php etc..

Second, if no index.html or index.php found in http://www.example.com/test/, instead of give page not found error as default set up

I want it to be redirected to

http://www.example.com/redirect.php?name=test

How the mod_rewrite should be set up to achieve that?

Thanks!

bradgrafelman

You could try a RequestCond:

RewriteEngine On 
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}/index.php !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}/index.html !-f
RewriteRule ^([^/]+)$ redirect.php?name=$1

blackhorse

Just save these 5 lines in .htaccess and upload to the site?

I did it and got the internal error message.

bradgrafelman

Works fine for me... are you sure that mod_rewrite is loaded?

blackhorse

Thanks! I checked the http.conf, it was not loaded.

OK, I have several other questions.

1) Do I have to load the mod_rewrite for the whole server, or could I just load the mod_rewrite for one site? Such as put the mod_rewrite in the block of <VirtualHost></VirtualHost> for only one site.
2) Will mod_rewrite cause too much extra load on the server?
3) If I load the mod_rewrite, but only add above codes for one site, it will not affect other sites performance, right?
4) Are there any security concerns I need to know if enable the above mod_rewrite codes? Of course, I will take care the redirect.php page's regular security checking. Are there others?

Thanks!

bradgrafelman

The LoadModule Apache directive can not be used inside a <VirtualHost> section, so no, it's not possible to load it for only one site (AFAIK).
I don't believe it will cause extra load, as I believe it defaults to turning itself off - you have to specify "RewriteEngine On" in a .htaccess file for it to parse any URI's.
See #2 above - if a directory doesn't have a .htaccess file with "RewriteEngine On" in it, then no, the engine won't be processing any URI's.
Not that I know of... you can Google around a bit if you'd like, though.

blackhorse

Will most shared hosting already load the mod_rewrite? If the mod_rewrite was not turned on in most shared hosting, just to make my system portable, I can use the real redirect to achieve what I want.

As a matter of fact, all I want to do is a shortcut redirect.

http://www.mysite.com/place1 redirect to http://www.mysite.com/... (some page about place 1)
http://www.mysite.com/place2 redirect to http://www.mysite.com/... (some page about place 2)

There is another approach I can achieve this. Instead of using mod_redirect, I can just create the folder/file, place1/index.php, place2/index.php, ... and use header("Location "); in these index.php file to do the real redirect.

All these folder/page I can create/manage automatically through a database back end php script,

Will that be good for performance too? Or mod_rewrite is just fine and most shared hosting would allow it, I should just use mod_rewrite to keep everything simple.

bradgrafelman

I would say stick with mod_rewrite - if a shared host doesn't allow it, then they aren't worth your time to begin with.

blackhorse

OK. Thanks!