[UPHPU] Rewriting Apache URLs

[Jon Jensen]

To elaborate on what Jeff said, two major benefits are SEO and usability.
Having relevent keywords in a url can go a long way to helping your rankings
in the search engines.

e.g. http://somesite/microsoft/windows/xp.html is much better than
http://somesite/product.php?id=123

I've got quite a bit of personal experience with this.... For example,
http://www.saltlakemotorsports.com has seen a dramatic increase in organic
traffic since we changed the product page URL's using mod_rewrite (e.g.
/ducati-daytona-long-sleeved-t-shirt.html).

As for usability, it makes for URL's that are easier to remember, and it
also makes for guessable URL's ... Say you're on a blog w/ the URL
http://someblog/archive/2005/01/ ... If you want to see if there were posts
in 1/2002, a quick way would be to simply change the URL.

While mod_rewrite has a learning curve and can seem like voodoo at first, it
is definitely worth taking the time to figure out.

Jon