Changing the structure of links

[321web]

On my site I have links like

http://321webmaster.com/index/7/40

How can I get them all to read like

http://321webmaster.com/index/Free_S...RL_Redirection

Thus replacing the sub cats and cats with their proper names instead of their identifying numbers?

[awasson]

You might find this article handy:
http://www.devarticles.com/c/a/Apach...cer-Page-URLs/

It was written about changing querystrings ie:
www.example.com/index.php?pageID=12&tabID=2
into
www.example.com/about/principals

Or something similar, but it might have some techniques you can use.

[vinyl-junkie]

You might also be interested in the SitePoint article titled Search Engine Friendly URLs. It has quite a few helpful pointers.

[321web]

neither address this specific problem.

[vinyl-junkie]

This is a kind of half-formed idea, but how about constructing some sort of translation table? Something like:

Element 1 = Category 1
Element 2 = Category 2
etc.

I don't know exactly how you want it to function, but it could possibly involve a switch statement to decide on how to build the new URL and redirect accordingly.

Does that help at all?

[awasson]

I think it's going to have to be handled by apache if it's going to be efficient. PHP is going to be too resource hungry if you have lots of traffic. You should be able to do some sort of module mod_ rewrite thing and handle it right at the http request.

Have you checked with the apache folks in the Configure Your Server > Apache section?