website.com/username

[cancer10]

Hi

I was wondering how do they do that website.com/any-username thing?


Just like when you signup at twitter, you get u a vanity url like twitter.com/cancer10


Does anyone know?

Pls if someone can explain :)


Thanks

[Fou-Lu]

Mod_rewrite
Moving from PHP forum to Apache configuration forum.
I assumed you're using Apache as well, I don't know of IIS has a similar rewrite module or not.

[cancer10]

I am using Apache, yes


What is the syntax, pls if you can post?


Thanks

[Fou-Lu]

I lol'd. Thought I put an example in the last:

RewriteEngine ON
RewriteRule ^.*/([^/\.]+)/?$ userPage.php?page=$1 [L]

Doesn't need to be a PHP page, but it should certainly be dynamically creatable.
Look into this link: http://www.workingwith.me.uk/articles/scripting/mod_rewrite

[cancer10]

Question:

For multiple pages, do I have to write the code as:

RewriteEngine ON
RewriteRule ^.*/([^/\.]+)/?$ userPage.php?page=$1 [L]
RewriteRule ^.*/([^/\.]+)/?$ questions.php?page=$1 [L]
RewriteRule ^.*/([^/\.]+)/?$ comments.php?page=$1 [L]

[cancer10]

I was waiting for an answer :(


pls if someone can answer to my saecond last post


Thanks

[Fou-Lu]

No, the above would always match the first pattern and rewrite it to the userPage.php style.
To do a more specific target, you'll need to write a more specific condition. Say you're link is /Comments/765, so the comment is the 765th comment. That would be like so:

RewriteRule ^.*/Comments/(\d+)/?$ comments.php?page=$1 [L]


You can setup rule chaining, but you'll need to find someone much more knowledgeable with rewrite than I.