Question

On my site, user profiles can be reached by the url www.example.com/user/profile.php?uid=3
I want to make it easier for users to reach their profile by simply requesting for www.example.com/username

Each users has a username that cannot change. How can I do this?

Here is my current .htaccess file

Options +FollowSymLinks -MultiViews
# Turn mod_rewrite on
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /

# If the request is not for a valid directory
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
# If the request is not for a valid file
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
# If the request is not for a valid link
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-l
# finally this is your rewrite rule
RewriteRule ^blog/(.+)$ blog.php/$1 [L,NC]
RewriteRule ^(.+)$ user_page/profile.php?uid=$1 [L,QSA]

Answer 1

Use this code in your .htaccess under DOCUMENT_ROOT:

Options +FollowSymLinks -MultiViews
# Turn mod_rewrite on
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /

# If the request is for a valid directory
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
# If the request is for a valid file
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f
# If the request is for a valid link
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -l
# do not do anything
RewriteRule ^ - [L]

# forward /blog/foo to blog.php/foo
RewriteRule ^blog/(.+)$ blog.php/$1 [L,NC]

# forward /john to user_page/profile.php?name=john
RewriteRule ^((?!blog/).+)$ user_page/profile.php?name=$1 [L,QSA,NC]

Now inside profile.php you can translate $_GET['name'] to $uid by looking up user’s name into a database table.