Comments on: Quickly Set Up a Templating System Using .htaccess

By: hvm70

hvm70 — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 16:56:40 +0000

i like to use .htaccess like this :P

Deny from all

so…..!! LOL and thank you :P

By: Brandon Hansen

Brandon Hansen — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 23:20:17 +0000

I really like this solution. You could also use a constant in PHP to set the path to css files. That would give absolute references, however, which allows people to take a look at your .css and .js files (not that that should be a bad thing)

By: Pierre Canthelou

Pierre Canthelou — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 21:53:47 +0000

Hi, don't want to break your code, but why don't you do

RewriteRule ^(css|graphics|js)/(.*),([0-9]) /templates/version$1/$3/$2

if you want to cntrol the theme ID

RewriteRule ^(css|graphics|js)/(.*) /templates/version2/$3/$2

By: Иван

Иван — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 17:09:32 +0000

@Dave It’s possible to use “alias” instead of “rewrite”. But why would you use this approach? If it is for the sake of short code, yes it has a point.

Here is a downside of this approach (from personal experience)

You have v1 and v2 themes, where v1 is red and v2 is blue with v1 being the current. The themes are basically the same, just different tints. You have set the expires headers, say 30 days since the last visit, or fixed time in future (doesn’t really matter). I visit your site and my browser caches one static page. In the event of changing the themes internaly (via .htaccess) before the cache expires, my browser will not bother fetching the files again, since to it they (the files) haven’t changed.

Or if the files are partially named the same way this might result in very very nasty nasty picture.

By: Gaurav

Gaurav — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 13:58:47 +0000

@Mark : Thank will try that.

By: Jesus DeLaTorre

Jesus DeLaTorre — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 00:37:41 +0000

David have you seen how netvibes does it? they do something like main.css?v=46

I supposed netvibes way is to make sure the user gets the updated version of main.css and not the browser cached version they have.

When I read this article’s title, I thought about it in a different way. What if you want to implement a templating system such that if a user prefers a dark template, they can set some option and view the site in a dark layout as opposed to a light layout. Similiar to what forums like vbulletin do. They allow the user to choose the template they want. How would you tackle this problem?

By: Luca

Luca — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 22:27:18 +0000

That’s a very nice idea, switching versions is always a nightmare!
Thank you

By: Clinton Montague

Clinton Montague — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 20:12:12 +0000

I have used similar mod_rewrite code in my projects before. I normally keep it on one line however,

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^(css|js|images)/(.*) templates/version1/$1/$2

Just my preference though as sometimes we have large .htaccesses so it’s a bit easier to read.

I’d also be interested to know if anyone has any different/better ways to do this!

By: david

david — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 19:50:03 +0000

@Alex: You could. I tried Smarty once but didn’t like it.

By: Alex

Alex — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 19:39:27 +0000

Why not use a 100% organic php software like smarty?