How can I make user-friendly URL to link to my website with?

Question

For example, let's say my website is www.mywebsite.com/profile.php?id=1. My account is 1, but instead of having that /profile.php?id=1, I want to instead to be able to give a link to my friends that is my name instead, so it ends up being www.mywebsite.com/chrisgreene.

I was looking into Apache's URL rewrite, but I didn't know if that was something that converted it after the fact (just a 'cover up' to show as you went to the page), rather than a hard link to use to get to the same page.

Answer 1

Visit http://roshanbh.com.np/2008/03/url-rewriting-examples-htaccess.html

Maybe can be useful for you.

Answer 2

in a .htaccess file in the root of your web dir. you add this:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^([a-z]+)$ profile.php?name=$1

then on your profile page get the results based on the name.

Answer 3

 RewriteEngine On
 RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -s [OR]
 RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -l [OR]
 RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d

 RewriteRule ^.*$ - [NC,L]
 RewriteRule ^.*$ profile.php?name=$1 [NC,L]

Now you will get the name within your profile.php you have to search the name withing your db and use that's id.