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

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Select Dropdowns, MooTools, and CSS Print

    I know I've harped on this over and over again but it's important to enhance pages for print. You can do some things using simple CSS but today's post features MooTools and jQuery. We'll be taking the options of a SELECT element and generating...

  • By
    MooTools CountDown Plugin

    There are numerous websites around the internet, RapidShare for example, that make you wait an allotted amount of time before presenting you with your reward. Using MooTools, I've created a CountDown plugin that allows you to easily implement a similar system. The MooTools JavaScript The CountDown class...

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!