URL Rewriting using .htaccess in PHP

Benefits of Static url over Dynamic URLs
1. Static URLs typically Rank better in Search Engines.
2. Search Engines are known to index the content of dynamic pages a lot slower compared to static pages.
3. Static URLs are always more friendlier looking to the End Users.

What is the benefits of rewriting URL?
When a search engine visits the dynamic url like product.php?id=3 it does not give much importance to that URL as search engine sees ? sign treat it as a url which keeps on changing. so we are converting the dynamic URL like the product.php?id=3 to static url format like product-3.html. We rewrite the url in such a way that in browser's address bar it will display as a product-3.html but it actually calls the file product.php?id=3. So that why these kind of URL also named as SEO friendly URL.

What is required for URL rewriting ??
To rewrite the URL you must have the mod_rewrite module must be loaded in apache server. And furthermore, FollowSymLinks options also need to be enabled otherwise you may encounter 500 Internal Sever Error.

If you are looking for the examples of URL rewriting then this post might be useful for you. In this post, I've given five useful examples of URL rewriting using .htacess.

Examples of url rewriting for seo friendly URL
For rewriting the URL, you should create a .htaccess file in the root folder of your web directory. And have to put the following codes as your requirement.

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^(.*)\.htm$ $1.php [nc]
The following example will rewrite the test.php to test.html i.e when a URL like http://localhost/test.htm is called in address bar it calls the file test.php. As you can see the regular expression in first part of the RewriteRule command and $1 represents the first regular expression of the part of the RewriteRule and [nc] means not case sensitive.

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^product-([0-9]+)\.html$ products.php?id=$1
The following example will rewrite the product.php?id=5 to porduct-5.html i.e when a URL like http://localhost/product-5.html calls product.php?id=5 automatically.

SEO expert always suggest to display the main keyword in the URL. In the following URL rewriting technique you can display the name of the product in URL.

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^product/([a-zA-Z0-9_-]+)/([0-9]+)\.html$ product.php?id=$2
If you like to do like http://yoursite.com/xyz to http://yoursite.com/user.php?username=xyz then you can add the following code to the .htaccess file.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9_-]+)$ user.php?username=$1
RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9_-]+)/$ user.php?username=$1
Suppose the you've redeveloped your site and all the new development reside inside the “new” folder of inside root folder.Then the new development of the website can be accessed like “test.com/new”. Now moving these files to the root folder can be a hectic process so you can create the following code inside the .htaccess file and place it under the root folder of the website. In result, www.test.com point out to the files inside “new” folder.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^test\.com$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.test\.com$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/new/
RewriteRule (.*) /new/$1

Hope this post will be helpful as other posts.