[pmwiki-users] Clean URLS cookbook question

Joachim Durchholz jo at durchholz.org
Sun Feb 5 07:42:44 CST 2006


H. Fox schrieb:
> Separate pages would probably be better for those.  Do the vast
> majority of Apache servers support mod_rewrite?

Actually I wouldn't expect that.
First, it's very easy to get the mod_rewrite configuration wrong. You 
need to have at least FollowSymLinks else it will flatly refuse to work, 
it needs regular expressions which are easy to get wrong, and it uses 
subrequests (an ill-documented feature) and a few dirty tricks that 
depend on Apache's inner workings, so it's easy to try the wrong 
approach. So, web hosters will shy away from providing their customers 
with mod_rewrite facilities - it means more support calls.
Second, there seems to be a general feeling that it's dangerous. (It can 
be, though only for specific ways of setting up access privileges. I 
don't think it will open any additional security holes in a typical 
shared-hosting environment, unless administration did a bad job - but 
then I haven't seen all circumstance, so I may be wrong.)

So, the other ways to get clean URLs should get as much attention as the 
mod_rewrite way. (mod_rewrite is the most straightforward way, despite 
the complications involved. That's probably why it got so much attention 
in the past.)

Regards,
Jo




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