Organized, Short Folder Structure Using mod_rewrite

By  on  

I tend to be over-organized when I create the folder structure of my customers' websites. I like using descriptive file and folder names for a number of reasons:

  • Search engine friendly URLS and image names (for image searches)
  • Descriptive file names give users a "preview" of the linked page in the status bar (if the anchor text isn't descriptive enough or the link is an image)
  • I want to be able to tell what a file is when I see the file name

One problem with my method is that long folder names can be annoying to type and can bloat your pages resulting in ugly load times. I use the power of mod_rewrite to shorten paths to files I reference most, image files.

The XHTML

Image

becomes...

Image

The mod_rewrite .htaccess

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^gis/(.*)$ /graphics/icons/small/$1 [L]

Recent Features

  • By
    CSS Animations Between Media Queries

    CSS animations are right up there with sliced bread. CSS animations are efficient because they can be hardware accelerated, they require no JavaScript overhead, and they are composed of very little CSS code. Quite often we add CSS transforms to elements via CSS during...

  • By
    5 Ways that CSS and JavaScript Interact That You May Not Know About

    CSS and JavaScript:  the lines seemingly get blurred by each browser release.  They have always done a very different job but in the end they are both front-end technologies so they need do need to work closely.  We have our .js files and our .css, but...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Facebook-Style Modal Box Using MooTools

    In my oh-so-humble opinion, Facebook's Modal box is the best modal box around. It's lightweight, subtle, and very stylish. I've taken Facebook's imagery and CSS and combined it with MooTools' awesome functionality to duplicate the effect. The Imagery Facebook uses a funky sprite for their modal...

  • By
    Multiple Background CSS Animations

    CSS background animation has been a hot topic for a long time, mostly because they look pretty sweet and don't require additional elements.  I was recently asked if it was possible to have multiple background animations on a given element and the answer is yes...with...

Discussion

  1. Very slick :)

  2. Okay very interesting. How would that apply if your directory structure was set out like this?

    /nr/rdonlyres/2069656a-f68e-4563-b9a5-4b9a9922f7a4/0/transferform0809.pdf

    /nr/rdonlyres/86e6a9ab-1633-4e4b-8790-bff74df03487/0/lamslistpublishedweb11november08.pdf

    As you can see the 3rd subfolder changes and could be anything.

    What if I wanted it to look like.

    /attachment/filename.pdf

    Using the method you mentioned how would it work?

    Cheers
    zeroanarchy

    • efwf

      hahaha melllttttttttt , no one likes you !

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!