One of the most useful things that a Web designer can learn is the Apache Server's "mod_rewrite" capability. I don't care what you Program in (PHP/Perl/Ruby) you have to learn mod_rewrite if you want to make large-dynamic sites!


Here are invaluable resources in learning the .htaccess mod_rewrite functions:

Rewrite Guide(VERY IMPORTANT!)

http://www.thejackol.com/htaccess-cheatsheet/

mod_rewrite-cheat-sheet

http://www.petefreitag.com/cheatsheets/apache/

All of this is based off:
Apache Rewrite Manual

Note: In order to use mod_rewrite you must have an apache server. Most hosting companies are running Apache, unless your server is window?s based; Then you might have IIS running.


Here is one of the most common uses of mod_rewrite:

Here we are taking a request for anything from index/1 to index/99999 and rewriting the page to pass the varable to index.php
(such as index.php?page=1 or index.php?page=99999 )