Question

I am trying to get Apache 2.2 mod_rewrite to get clean urls.
I have links such as

<ul>
<li><a href="index.php?view=pageName">Page Name</a></li>
<li><a href="index.php?view=pageName2">Page Name2</a></li>
<li><a href="index.php?view=pageName3">Page Name3</a></li>
</ul>

and url comes out to be

http://example.com/user/index.php?view=pageName

I would like to clean the url in the address bar it to this

http://example.com/user/pageName

Edit: This is what’s in my httpd.conf if it’s any use.

<Directory "C:/Apache2.2/htdocs/user">
    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride all
    order allow,deny
    Allow from all
</Directory>

Using phpinfo() I have verified that mod_rewrite is loaded and I have this in my .htaccess (user file, Not root .htaccess) and not virtual user on apache

RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /user/ #Edited rewrite base added in, but not helping much.
RewriteOptions Inherit
RewriteRule ^/user/([a-zA-Z])/?$ index.php?view=$1  [NC,L] 

Edit: the rest of my .htaccess

#Ensure browser reads Header
Header unset ETag
FileETag None
Header unset Last-Modified

#Set caching expires
Header set Expires On
ExpiresDefault "access plus 30 days"

#gzip
<FilesMatch "\.(js|css)$">
SetOutputFilter DEFLATE
</FilesMatch>

does not work the same on all menu links which are identical in html structure, and not working properly. IE: It sends me to http://example.com/user/?view=pageName, but is loading the root HTML file content.

If I change this line

RewriteRule ^/user/([a-zA-Z])/?$ index.php?view=$1  [NC,L]

to

RewriteRule ^index\.php$ http://www.google.com  [NC,L]

I get sent to google as expected. So obviously I must be doing something wrong with the matching and replacing, but what am I doing wrong?
Thanks in advance.

Edit:
access.log and error.log are error free.

Answer 1

Fixed: Had to change HTML URL style to be used as such

<a href="pageName">Page Name</a>

Then in .htaccess

RewriteEngine On
RewriteOptions Inherit
ReWriteBase /user/
RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9]+)/?$ index.php?view=$1 [QSA,L]

Also had to disable mod_cache.so from apache’s httpd.conf as it interfere with rewrite if there are any caches left behind. Hope this helps others to get clean urls working.