[SOLVED] Creating URLs for users in my site

[npsari]

Hi there,

 

I have a community website

 

At the moment, the way of seeing a user's profile is ...

 

http://www.example.com/users.php?user=7

 

But now, I want users to have a real link

 

http://www.example.com/sara

 

 

Like Myspace does, which allows you to choose an URL

 

How does a website do that, do i create folders for users in my public folder directory

is that how it is done?

 

What if there is thousands of users... Will i end up having thousands of folders in my public directory

 

So, Myspace has billions of folders then

 

Can you tell me how this is done

[thebadbad]

You should be able to find plenty of so called mod rewrite topics around here. It's an Apache (server) thing.

[sstangle73]

heres a nice wizzard to help you with mod rewrite its not perfect but it helps

http://www.mod-rewrite-wizard.com/

[npsari]

Ohh, you mean this

MOD rewrite 

is what iam looking for

 

So, the way is not to create a directiory for each user

[sstangle73]

noo thats what i thought at 1st also then i learned about mod rewrite it is bassed off gets so what the url is really is http://www.example.com/users.php?user=7

but the users see

http://www.example.com/sara

 

look at my site. http://stangle.info/sstangle73 shows my profile

also this will http://stangle.info/profile.php?username=sstangle73

[npsari]

Your website looks cool, but it asks me to register so i can see that page, well, i might register to see whats crackin there

 

anyway, thanks for the info

 

I will try to study theis MOD thing, and see what happens from there

 

But that site looks like a software or something, http://www.mod-rewrite-wizard.com/

 

isnt there like a php script which i can use

[redarrow]

 

a guess

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^(.+)/([a-z]+)/?$ http://www.example.com/users.php?username=$_GET['username']

[npsari]

The problem is that this website and i think the code you gave me now end the URL with .html or .php

 

So, it becomes something like:  http://www.example.com/sara.html

 

It looks wrong

 

Do you know why this is the way

 

It has to end with the name only

[trq]

The mod_rewrite should look like....

 

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ users.php?user=$1 [L]

[npsari]

Just to clarify somethings from my side

 

That code you gave me should be between php tags?

 

<?
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ users.php?user=$1 [L]
?>

and where is the part where i identify $1

 

Is there a link which i can read about all that stuff guys

 

 

[sstangle73]

this goes in the .htaccess sp? file google mod rewrite youll find some nice tuts thats how i learned it

google is your friend!

[trq]

The code I gave you is not php. It is some apache directives that setup a mod_rewrite rule. You need to place those lines in your .htaccess file if you have one, or create the file if you don't.

 

You need to read up on mod_rewrite to find out more.

[trq]

I should add. Given an address like http://yoursite.com/foo , the username foo will show up in $_GET['user'] within the users.php file.

[npsari]

Ok, thanks guys

 

I dont understand much still, but it is fair that i try myself to understand it

 

at least i know the name now

 

mod_rewrite

 

i will google it!!

 

[trq]

I posted a link to the manual page.