I am building a website and I would like to customize the users' profile so their profile url shares their name. For example, the website domain would be www.example.com and the users' url would be www.example.com/username.
I am assuming this is a convention because I see this all around the web. Is this done by giving each user their own directory and how painstaking would that be?
I really can't justify using htaccess for something like this. I only use htaccess to route everything through one php file (my root index.php) and let php sort out how to handle the url. For example, you could do this:
$uri = trim($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], '/'); $pieces = explode('/', $uri); $username = $pieces[0]; Then do something with $username.
The way I parse and use my url's is a bit more complicated than this, but it wouldn't be relevant to your question. Just make sure whatever you do is able to account for any possible query strings, etc.
mod-rewrite is not great for performance, so I wouldn't abuse it.
Here's just a slight expansion on my original code sample:
//.htaccess - route all requests through index.php RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !\.(png|jpe?g|gif|css|js|html)$ [NC] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteRule ^.*$ index.php [L] and this is an example of what you could do in index.php:
$pieces = preg_split('-/-', $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], NULL, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY); $username = $pieces[0]; include "users/{$username}.php"; Now you could visit mysite.com/myUserNameHere, the request goes to index.php which parses out the username and includes a file for that user.
That takes care of the routing just like you asked. I said that my routing is more complicated, but my use is a lot more complicated, so it isn't relevant. I only warned that my code here doesn't account for a url with a query string attached, like "mysite.com/someUser/?foo=bar". It's a simple process to parse the url without the query string and you should be able to handle that. If you need further assistance parsing the url, then make a post asking about that.
You are looking for a RewriteRule. I think the following should do:
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?username=$1 [NC] This will convert the displayed url (www.example.com/myusername), to an url with a GET parameter for your index.php. This new url that you can use internally will look like this:
www.example.com/index.php?username=myusername Update: Here is an extra clarification to answer the questions in your comment:
The RewriteRule above does exactly what you are asking. The user can enter an url like www.example.com/username, which will be internally rewritten (without the user ever noticing it) to www.example.com/index.php?username=myusername. That way you can access the get variable ($_GET["username"]), without the user ever seeing it exists.
I put this directive in httpd.conf file, but upon doing so apache doesn't work``<Directory> RewriteEngine On Options +MultiViews RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}\.php !-f RewriteRule ^/(.*)$ profile.php?username=$1 [NC,L] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}\.php !-f RewriteRule ^/(.*)/(.*)$ ad.php?username=$1&title=$2 [NC,L] </Directory>[Thu Dec 26 21:42:54.790828 2013] [core:notice] [pid 3996:tid 456] AH00094: Command line: 'c:\\wamp\\bin\\apache\\apache2.4.4\\bin\\httpd.exe -d C:/wamp/bin/apache/Apache2.4.4' [Thu Dec 26 21:42:54.792803 2013] [mpm_winnt:notice] [pid 3996:tid 456] AH00418: Parent: Created child process 6352 [Thu Dec 26 21:42:55.176419 2013] [mpm_winnt:notice] [pid 6352:tid 340] AH00354: Child: Starting 150 worker threads. [Sun Dec 29 10:07:34.187381 2013] [mpm_winnt:notice] [pid 3996:tid 456] AH00422: Parent: Received shutdown signal -- Shutting down the server.
What you mean are not 'real' URIs, but are rewrites. So with .htaccess you can redirect the viewing user from a regular URI like example.com/user to example.com/users.php?name=user without him seeing it.
It is kind of a convention, as it's useful to make URIs more readable, it also can let Google give a better ranking for that page as there might be keywords in the URI and the URI is shorter, so the keywords stand out better.
Here's a basic rewrite, which is to place in your .htaccess file somewhere on your server (mostly in the root so it can control all subfolders from there on):
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ users.php?name=$1 [NC] 