htaccess help needed - static page on wordpress site

My website is powered by wordpress (installed in the root level of my web directory). I have a static page/script, not controlled by wordpress, uploaded in the root level of my site (product.php). This page is used to dynamically display the product info for whatever product is chosen on product list pages. In my htaccess file I have the standard WordPress stuff that is necessary to make the site work:

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

I have also added the following to the htaccess file:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^product/([0-9]+)/$ /product.php?sku=$1

I’m trying to be able to use urls like "product/1234" but still grab the sku number as a GET variable on my static (not controlled by wordpress) product.php page.

If I delete the wordpress stuff, my rewriterule works perfectly for the product page, but of course the rest of the site doesn’t work because the wordpress directives are gone. But with the wordpress stuff in place my rewriterule doesn’t work.

I'm very new to htaccess (in fact this is my first time messing with it) and I'd be very grateful for any help you could give me. Why does my rule work if the wordpress stuff is gone but not when the wordpress stuff is present? How do I accomplish what my rule does without breaking the wordpress part of the site?

 

Do it before wordpress conds & rules. Like this:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /

# Your code first
RewriteRule ^product/([0-9]+)/$ product.php?sku=$1 [color=red][L][/color]

# WordPress start
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
# WordPress end
</IfModule>

Code (markup):

Note the L flag in your rule to stop the rewriting there if url matches /product/0123/.

 

That worked perfectly! Thanks a lot cybernaut!

 

Cybernaut (or anyone else),

Things are working just how I want them to on my site now. But for some reason, with this change we have made, my wordpress admin tool isn't letting me save a page. When I go to save a page, it gives me an internal server error. In fact, after trying to save a page in the admin tool my site no longer pulls up either (giving an internal server error instead) until I re-save my htaccess file. Any ideas?

 

I think wordpress is changing .htaccess. If your .htaccess file is writable by web server, make it read only (chmod) to see if that works.

 

Changing to read only worked. Kind of a pain to have to change it back to writable any time I need to make a change, but that really shouldn't happen very often. Thanks a lot for all the help!