Hi all, I run a restaurant review site for one city, and am in the process of rewriting some of the code so that I can add new cities easily with no new code

neccesary each time I add one. I also really want to keep the SEO rankings I'm getting. I'm finding mod_rewrite really tricky to work out, so was hoping

someone would be so kind as to help me out?

I need a .htaccess file to do the following:


Rewrite all URLs for city and preserve any querystrings, e.g.

mydomain.com/london/index.php
mydomain.com/london/search.php?type=new
mydomain.com/london/10.php

rewritten to

mydomain.com/index.html?city=london
mydomain.com/search.html?city=london&type=new
mydomain.com/restaurant.php?city=london&rid=10

Basically all address in folder thecity written to root page.php?city=thecity, but css and image/flash links need to stay relative to the root.

Even better, would I be able to have something such as the restaurant's name instead of an ID number? Would this help with SEO rankings?



Here is my current .htaccess file that a friend wrote for me when I launched 3 years ago. The rules for the search.php page need to be kept intact but taking

into account the new city folder structure.

RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^brighton.html$ /search.php
RewriteRule ^viewall.html$ /search.php?orderby=name
RewriteRule ^toprated.html$ /search.php?top=true
RewriteRule ^new.html$ /search.php?new=true
RewriteRule ^mostreviewed.html$ /search.php?most=true
RewriteRule ^([A-Za-z0-9-]+).html?$ /restaurant.php?rid=$1
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^(.*)\.mydomain\.co.uk$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.mydomain.co.uk/$1 [R=301,L]

Am I being an idiot? Is it something really simple that I should be able to work out or am I trying to do something the wrong way? Mod_rewrite is obviously a ver powerful tool, and I would love to be able to make full use of it. I wasn't sure if it was a good idea or etiquette to add my site's address to this post but I can if it will help (edit: whoops, just realised it's in my sig any way!).

I would really really appreciate some help with this as even though PHP is not a problem for me, mod_rewrite is becoming a real pain! Every time I think I've fixed something I seem to break another thing!

OK so I have something that pretty much works:

RewriteEngine on RewriteBase / RewriteRule ^mcfarlane/.*$ - [PT]

#Rewrite all searches
RewriteRule ^brighton.html$ ^/search.php
RewriteRule ^viewall.html$ ^/search.php?orderby=name
RewriteRule ^toprated.html$ ^/search.php?top=true
RewriteRule ^new.html$ ^/search.php?new=true
RewriteRule ^mostreviewed.html$ ^/search.php?most=true
RewriteRule ^([A-Za-z0-9-]+).html?$ ^/restaurant.php?rid=$1

#Rewrite style.css
RewriteRule ^([A-Za-z0-9-]+)/([A-Za-z0-9-]+).css?$ /style.css

#Rewrite images
RewriteRule ^([A-Za-z0-9-]+)/images/([A-Za-z0-9-_]+).gif?$ /images/$2.gif
RewriteRule ^([A-Za-z0-9-]+)/images/([A-Za-z0-9-_]+).jpg?$ /images/$2.jpg
RewriteRule ^([A-Za-z0-9-]+)/images/([A-Za-z0-9-_]+).bmp?$ /images/$2.bmp
RewriteRule ^([A-Za-z0-9-]+)/images/([A-Za-z0-9-_]+).swf?$ /images/$2.swf

#Rewrite searches from /city/search.php to /search.php?city=city
RewriteRule ^([A-Za-z0-9-]+)/search.php$ /search.php?city=$1


RewriteRule ^([A-Za-z0-9-]+)$ /$1/ [R]
RewriteRule ^([A-Za-z0-9-]+)/$ /index.php?city=$1

#For restaurant listing
RewriteRule ^([A-Za-z0-9-]+)/([A-Za-z0-9-]+)/ /$2?&city=$1
RewriteRule ^([A-Za-z0-9-]+)/([A-Za-z0-9-]+).php$ /$2.php?&city=$1

RewriteRule ^([A-Za-z0-9-]+)/([A-Za-z0-9-]+).html$ /restaurant.php?rid=$2&city=$1

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^(.*)\.menureview\.co.uk$ [NC]
#RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.menureview.co.uk/$1 [R=301,L]

Could this be better written?