Custom URL

use folders for the one you want
, or better yet use subdomains... like username.myprofilewebsite.com

Do you want to give them their own webpage/server space or just use the URL as a personal page, example domain.not/username/ is really domain.not/page.fmt?user=person (which can be done with mod_rewrite in .htaccess)

I would like to give the 'appearance' that 'http://www.website.com/username' is their personal webpage.

Then they can tell their friends: "Hey you can look at my website by going to, http://www.website.com/myusername" and then the reader can go to their profile directly by enterining the direct URL.

So is it something where right now the URL looks like:

http://www.website.com/index.php?userid=myusername

If so, an .htaccess rewrite of the URL should be what you're looking for. I have not done that myself yet, but have started researching articles in preparation for a project I'm going to be working on. Here's one of the sites I've bookmarked:

http://www.yourhtmlsource.com/sitemanagement/urlrewriting.html

That would require a seperate folder and index file I believe... So you would have to create one for each username.

The htaccess rewrite would not necessarily require a seperate folder and index file. It definitely would not require one for each username. That's the whole point.

I didn't understand this very well until a couple of days ago. But what an htaccess rewrite can do is take this:

http://www.website.com/myusername

and change it behind the scenes to this:

http://www.website.com/index.php?userid=myusername

So you don't see the url with parameters passed, but your index.php does see the url parameter userid=myusername. You just have the one index.php file, but to those who visit your website, it looks like you have lots of subdirectories.

Let's say you also had a file called "aboutus.php" that you also wanted to be unique for each user. Same thing, fortunately! The .htaccess file can rewrite:

http://www.website.com/myusername/aboutus

into

http://www.website.com/aboutus.php?userid=myusername

Tim, Do you have any documentation on ataccess does that? I could use tht on my site.

if you have no absolute paths, or session ids in your URL then you would need to modify your htaccess file... If you only mean to have that appearance in your URL then, a folder with an index file would do that simply...

Rob: Yes, the link I posted before. Also, I've installed Drupal and other CMS's (but mostly Drupal) and they have that feature. They call it "clean URLs," I believe.

Here's the link again: http://www.yourhtmlsource.com/sitemanagement/urlrewriting.html

CN, to clear things up here, please let us know:

1. Do you already have these pages set up or are you just getting ready to do them.
2. If they already exist, can you give a sample URL to a page that you CAN access that you want to be changed to the format www.domain.com/username
3. If you are just getting ready, what type of pages will there be? (ie does each person have their own pages (static or otherwise) or are teh individual pages going to be part of some system to manage the content?

-Greg

PS, after googling your username, I see you were asking on a lot of other sites back in march about creating an online community, so I'm guessing here that you would not be having each person having their own pages.

as timjpriebe has described, mod_rewrite (an Apache module) is what can do that for you. Mod rewrite can catch all requests meeting a certain regular expression. So you can have mod_rewrite catch all URLs trying to access your site that have all letters or numbers, followed by a '.html', or a '/' or a '.user'. You do need an apache web server (to use mod_rewrite, apparently there are other versions of this for other servers).

But I would recommend that you have the user URLs be:

http://www.yoursite.com/users/SuperCoolDude423

instead of

http://www.yoursite.com/SuperCoolDude423

The reason for this is that you will have quite a hard time trying to only filter out requests for user's pages. There isn't any easy way to neglect your real URLs (http://www.yoursite.com/index.html) from being cought by mod_rewrite.

to use mod_rewrite, as stated, you need an apache box, most likely linux or unix OS. You also need to have it compiled with your server. Most hosting companies will recompile with it if you ask them. Once you have that set, you simply have to create a file in your root directory with the name '.htaccess'. In that file, you write your rewrite rules. Here is apache's guide on mod_rewrite:

http://httpd.apache.org/docs/1.3/mod/mod_rewrite.html

Good luck!

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