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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-29T07:44:19+00:00

If you go to a url like the following: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9155602/ the address bar will

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If you go to a url like the following: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9155602/ the address bar will be updated to http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9155602/redirect-existing-file-to-different-url-using-mod-rewrite. This is not done with JavaScript and not with a hard-refresh, my best guess is that it’s done with mod_rewrite; however, how would it know the title of the article without server side processing with php?

I just updated my site to use SEO friendly url’s, it used to be /shows.php?id=review-1 and now it’s /review/1/super-baseball-2020. The text at the end doesn’t actually really matter when it comes to my rewrite which is:

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^([a-z0-9]+)/([0-9]+)/([a-z0-9-]+)?/?$ /shows.php?id=$1-$2 [L,NC]

My current path of making sure Google doesn’t hit me for duplicate content, and that bookmarks get forwarded properly is the following:

RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^GET\s/shows\.php\?
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} (?:^|&)id=review-1(?:&|$) [NC]
RewriteRule ^ /review/1/super-baseball-2020/? [R=301,L,NC]
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^GET\s/shows\.php\?
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} (?:^|&)id=review-2(?:&|$) [NC]
RewriteRule ^ /review/2/aero-fighters-2/? [R=301,L,NC]
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^GET\s/shows\.php\?
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} (?:^|&)id=review-3(?:&|$) [NC]
RewriteRule ^ /review/3/aero-fighters-3/? [R=301,L,NC]
.... and so on ....

That solution is very shortsighted and is thousands of lines to put into my .htaccess.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    how would it know the title of the article without server side
    processing with php?

    mod_rewrite can only do so much. Plus, you’d have to update it too much. It’s best to handle these requests with scripting. Create an .htaccess, similar to what you’ve done:

    <IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
#RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php [QSA,L]
</IfModule>

    Then in your index.php, split the REQUEST_URI to parse out the /review/1/, look in the database for the title of the review with id of 1, pass it to your friendly URI (slug) function, and append it to the url, then redirect.

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