Show only domain name in address bar

vigour

I am building a picture database with php/mysql. I do not want to show my php filenames in the browser address bar. For example.

I want:

www.mydomain.com/myfile.php

to be:

www.mydomain.com

How can I do that?

bradgrafelman

Just one question... Why??

vigour

I want to protect the name of my files. And it looks much more professional.

bradgrafelman;10987387 wrote:
Just one question... Why??

traq

1) how will your users request a file if they don't know the filename?

2) why protect the filename?
you do realize that showing them the picture is the same as giving them the picture, right?

bradgrafelman

vigour;10987408 wrote:
I want to protect the name of my files.

Then don't put them on the internet.

vigour;10987408 wrote:
And it looks much more professional.

No, no it doesn't. A well-designed and easy-to-use website looks professional. If the professionalism of your website is coming down to what your address bar looks like (rather than the actual content of your website), then you've got bigger problems than a shorter URL.

You have to send some sort of identifier for each resource, otherwise how can the user's browser request them? You can't write an HTML document that says "there are three images here that you need to display, but I can't tell you their filenames so just figure it out on your own."

If the names of the files are so sensitive, then rename them. Otherwise, use some sort of RewriteRule logic to redirect whatever URLs you'd like to use instead to the appropriate destination.

laserlight

vigour wrote:
And it looks much more professional.

No, it does not, in my professional opinion.

traq

bradgrafelman;10987411 wrote:
Then don't put them on the internet.

lol, I've told people that before. they just get pissed off and call me a smart@$$

(but that is what it comes down to. you either put stuff online, or you don't.)

Derokorian

You could use a landing page but you would still have to have more than just the domain, for a landing page it would be a query string IE:
www.domain.com/folder/file.php could become
www.domain.com?r=aldkdjslenvls879287kld9

Then you would have an index.php which does:

$r = isset($_GET['r']) ? base64decode($_GET['r']) : 'home';
include(dirname(__FILE__) . $r . '.php');

Of course you'd have to make links like:

echo '<a href="www.domain.com?r='. base64encode('/folder/file') .'">Link to file</a>';

Of course has a base64 encoded url will not look professional or be very SE friendly.

vigour

What about Apache URL rewrite?

No offense but you guys are not very helpful right now.

cretaceous

yes, I think everyone went off on a tangent..
ok, so you know about Apache mod_rewrite..
that will do something towards what you want, up to a point, and taking into account the above comments ..
so what is it that you need to know?

vigour

I simply need to know how to configure apache. So it would be very helpful if someone can give me a easy to follow example how to do this with mod_rewrite. I am running a mac mini and latest snow leopard. I have my own domain pointed to by dyndns.

I will also explain what I want to do one more time because I can see that many people that answered me simply did not understand what I wanted to do.

This have nothing to do with my websites pictures. I simply want the address bar to snow mydoman.com all the time, that's it. You all know that we can send parameters between php files with mydomain.com/filename.php?id=value for example. I do that all the time. But I do not want to show that in the address bar. As easy as that.

cretaceous;10987450 wrote:
yes, I think everyone went off on a tangent..
ok, so you know about Apache mod_rewrite..
that will do something towards what you want, up to a point, and taking into account the above comments ..
so what is it that you need to know?

Derokorian

I simply want the address bar to snow mydoman.com all the time, that's it.

Well in order to have more than one page and show the same address each time I think the only way to acheive this would be to use iFrames -> http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_iframe.asp

bradgrafelman

vigour;10987440 wrote:
No offense but you guys are not very helpful right now.

None taken, since I still believe everyone was on-topic and attempting to be helpful. If someone asked me how to kill themselves, would you accuse me of being "not very helpful" if I didn't give them an answer and instead asked them questions to try and change their mind?

Since many of us thought what you wanted wasn't a very good idea, we wanted to examine why you wanted to do this (since perhaps we could address those reasons directly and perhaps offer a better solution). However, since this apparently isn't "help" enough for you, I'll simply stop responding.

laserlight

vigour wrote:
I will also explain what I want to do one more time because I can see that many people that answered me simply did not understand what I wanted to do.

Actually, I understood what you wanted to do, and I stand by my opinion that it is does not make your website any more professional than not doing it.

vigour wrote:
This have nothing to do with my websites pictures. I simply want the address bar to snow mydoman.com all the time, that's it. You all know that we can send parameters between php files with mydomain.com/filename.php?id=value for example. I do that all the time. But I do not want to show that in the address bar. As easy as that.

Fortunately or unfortunately, Derokorian has already given you a hint on how to proceed in post #12. There are other ways, e.g., you could have your content change without reloading through the use of AJAX. But still, why do you want to do this?

gawdsed

You could use session variables... but having parameters in the URL really isn't unprofessional imo.

cretaceous

vigour;10987451 wrote:
I simply want the address bar to show mydomain.com all the time, that's it.

ok now I'm going to agree with everyone else
(I previously put it down to you mis-stating a desire to use a mod_rewrite controller script, which your reply seemed to confirm)

of course you could build it in Flash ...

gawdsed

I honestly would just use Session variables, it does nearly the same thing as the GET params, but you don't get anything on the address bar. You would also have to code all your webpages off the index page, then all you do is call an INCLUDE(or require) from the page you want to display

traq

okay... mod_rewrite won't work if you only ever allow the one URL.

You could do it via sessions, but you'd have to POST all of your page requests in order to use only one URL.

you might consider using javascript (xhr) and simply loading everything dynamically.

but what it comes down to is this: it will be highly unusable. you'll be forcing users to use whatever nav system you implement, making the forward/back buttons and address bar effectively useless.

I'd highly recommend stepping back and considering why you're doing this. If there's a good reason, maybe I could suggest a good solution. but if there's not (or, if you won't say what the reason is), then my advice might be less than useful (and/or welcome).