Demystifying mod_rewrite

mod_rewrite is a necessary evil if you're a web server admin. The enormous amount of misinformed, worst-practice, and just-plain-wrong mod_rewrite advice on the web is a testament to how unnecessarily complex mod_rewrite has historically been to use.

In this talk, Rich will remove the mystery and show you the basic building block of regular expressions, and how to craft your own rewrite rules. You'll understand how the rewrite process works, and why, so that you aren't surprised by what rules do. You'll learn about rewrite maps, rewrite flags, and, at least as importantly, about the many ways that you can do things without using mod_rewrite at all, using basic Apache httpd functionality.

Rich is the author of 'The Definitive Guide to Apache mod_rewrite', and has spoken at dozens of conferences about mod_rewrite and other Apache httpd topics. He's worked on the Apache httpd docs for 15 years, including working on a complete overhaul of the mod_rewrite documentation.