cant figure out simple rewrite

After scouring the interwebs for hours with no luck.

I come asking directly for help

I would like to simply change my url from

http://www.mywebsite.com
http://www.mywebsite.com/index.php
http://www.mywebsite.com/index.php?p=multimedia
http://www.mywebsite.com/index.php?p=contact
http://www.mywebsite.com/index.php?p=new

to

http://www.mywebsite.com
http://www.mywebsite.com
http://www.mywebsite.com/multimedia
http://www.mywebsite.com/contact
http://www.mywebsite.com/new


I have tried everything I came across the web and I got nothing but server errors or no result at all

Can somebody please help

 

is this very difficult?

 

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^index.php$ http://www.mywebsite.com/ [R=301,L]
#(the dollar sign is very important in that instance)
RewriteRule ^([^/\.]+)/?$ /index.php?p=$1 [L]
#(this one is an exact copy from my website, with one vairable change [the p is an a in my query string] so I know it works)

If those don't work, something else is amiss in your configuration.

 

Thanks you

This sort of works

Now if I type http://www.mywebsite.com/index.php?p=multimedia it rewrites to http://www.mywebsite.com/?p=multimedia
OR if I type http://www.mywebsite.com/multimedia it rewrites to http://www.mywebsite.com/?p=multimedia

Is there a way to rewrite the url to a clean http://www.mywebsite.com/multimedia

Will this cause issues retrieving the GET variable? I see it all the time. Sorry for the rudimentary understanding of rewrite, it's something I'm trying to wrap my head around

The problem is I have a site live and I don't have the time to learn it in time to fix the urls

 

It should not be doing any of that, unless there is code hiding in your page. Rewrite rules are just a translation between a shown url, and the url that's actually being sent to a web server. They wont redirect to a different URL unless one specifies a redirect. If you want it to redirect, you'll have to add a couple more lines:

RewriteEngine on
#RewriteRule ^index.php$ http://www.mywebsite.com/ [R=301,L]
#(the dollar sign is very important in that instance)
RewriteRule ^index.php\?p=([A-Za-z0-9]+)$ http://www.mywebsite.com/$1 [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^([^/\.]+)/?$ /index.php?p=$1 [L]
#(this one is an exact copy from my website, with one vairable change [the p is an a in my query string] so I know it works)

Copy that whole block into your .htaccess. I have commented out my first rewrite rule, as I believe it might be causing some sort of issue. Let me know if this does the trick as far as the fancy urls. Keep in mind, if all your links go to pages with query strings, every link your viewer clicks on will have to send a second request once redirected. Not a problem if they have fast internet, but they might not like it if they have dialup or mobile browsers.

 

Thank you that absolutely worked!

I changed my nav links to

<li><a href="/">Home</a></li>
<li><a href="multimedia">Multimdia/a></li>
<li><a href="contact">Contact</a></li>
<li><a href="new">New</a></li>


I now have clean url's!! Thanks again