Newbie question - URL rewrite

Hi there,

I've had a llok thru a lot of forums, but can't seem to find the answer to this one...

So, correct me if I'm wrong, but my site will rank better with non-php URLs, so I am trying to implement a URL rewrite. This is the code I have put in my htaccess file:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule artist-name-(.*)\.htm$ artist.php?name=$1

with my php url being:
/artist.php?name=Mr%20Jones

My first issue seems to be that the rewrite doesnt seem to work. I have PHP 5.2.4, running on an apache 1.3.41 server, anyone got any ideas? No clues where to start....

Thanks

I'll take a stab at it - you need to provide a rewrite condition before a rule can be applied - maybe something like;

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^.*artist\.php
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^a=([^&]+)$
RewriteRule ^.*$ /artist-name/%1.html [R=301,L]

*crosses fingers*

Nah, still no love

Anything else I might try?

Try this one:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule artist-name-([^/]+)\.htm$ artist.php?name=$1

.* should work, too, but sometimes I have better luck with this.

Also keep in mind that they goal is not to get rid of .php. Search engines don't mind that stuff. But you want to keep the query parameters low and, more importantly, have keywords in you URL. And that's what this should help you with. But you could leave the .php instead of replacing it with .htm.

Also, do you know for a fact that the rewrite engine is working? Do you see activity in the rewrite log? I think you have it turned off, so you may want to add "RewriteLogLevel 3" to this and check the log.

Yeah, that should work.