Question

Trying to create fake folder structure.

Essentially what I want is any request to http://www.example.com/** (where ** equals any two letters) to redirect to http://www.example.com/folder/index.php?var=** (where ** equals the two letters from the first link)

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^/(.*)$ http://www.example.com/folder/index.php?var=$1

This is what I have right now, but it isn’t working. Any ideas?

Answer 1

Remove the leading / from the RewriteRule. The expression matched on the left side should not begin with / as a REQUEST_URI would. You can also omit the entire http://example.com from the right side, since you are rewriting on the same domain.

RewriteEngine On
# Rewrite 2 characters into var
RewriteRule ^(.{2})$ folder/index.php?var=$1 [L,R]

If it should match only alpha chars, it is recommended to limit the expression further (beyond .{2}, which matches 2 of any character)

# Only rewrite on exactly 2 alpha chars...
RewriteRule ^([A-Za-z]{2})$ folder/index.php?var=$1 [L,R]