Hi,
My website currently generates URL's such as:
http://touringnet.co.uk/?q=reviews&id=45 for a review and:
http://touringnet.co.uk/?q=comments&id=173 for a news article.

It's pretty clear how it works, we've got the page ID and the content ID to fetch from the database.

I am, however, aware that search engines are not too friendly towards an address which uses &id.

For this reason I am attempting to use mod rewrite to correct the URL's so they display along the lines of:
http://touringnet.co.uk/review/reviewid.html
http://touringnet.co.uk/news/newsid.html

So, my code for the .htaccess is:
Quote:
RewriteEngine on
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule /?q=reviews&id=$ /review/([0-9]+)
RewriteRule /?q=comments&id=$ /news/([0-9]+)


However, when I upload this file nothing seems to happen which I don't understand. I've tried many ways and none of them seem to do anything!

Does anybody know what is wrong?
Thanks.

RewriteRule /?q=comments&id=$ /news/([0-9]+)

The first parameter is a regular expression, (regex). Regex has characters
that have special meaning. Two such characters are the ? and the $.
The ? in called a quantifier and means 'zero or one'. The $ means 'end
here', so you are looking to match URLs that end with an equal sign.

Firstly, to nullify the special meaning of your ?, precede it with a backslash
like this \?

Next, drop the $ for now.

Now you have RewriteRule /\?q=comments&id=

and my question is how many digits could possibly show up after the
equals sign?


Bompa

Thanks for your reply.
No limit.

As well, you have to actually write your urls like this...

http://touringnet.co.uk/review/reviewid.html

Is your database software going to handle queries in another format?

they display along the lines of:
http://touringnet.co.uk/review/reviewid.html
http://touringnet.co.uk/news/newsid.html