WordPress URL Rewrite Rules Explained

Apache Server allows URL rewrite rule by simply placing a file called .htaccess under the FTP directories. The Rewrite Rules will override its parent one if there is any. However, you could set the following in sub-folder’s <em.htaccess. to explicitly allow using parents’ .htaccess.

RewriteOptions inherit

After installation of WordPress, it will generate a .htaccess under the root directory of the blog. Take this blog for example, the following is the default content generated by WordPress.

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /acm/
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /acm/index.php [L]
</IfModule>

# END WordPress

Comments start as hash. IfModule checks if the rewrite-module is enabled. ^index\.php$ – [L] prevents requests for index.php from being rewritten, in order to avoid infinite loops. If the request is for index.php the directive does nothing – and stops processing rules [L] i.e. L – Last. RewriteCond specifies that if the requested is not a real file or not a real directory, all will be redirected to index.php, which can obtain the $_SERVER[‘REQUEST_URI’]  and it calls the correct code for rendering the page the user requested.

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^/?(.*)$ /index.php?id=$1 [L]
</IfModule>

The above line RewriteRule ^/?(.*)$ /index.php?id=$1 [L] is usually used to translate the URL like https://steakovercooked.com/xyz to https://steakovercooked.com/index.php?id=xyz.

–EOF (The Ultimate Computing & Technology Blog) —