.htaccess URL Rewrite Problem (Scripts don't load)

Question

I am having a problem with an URL rewrite issue in .htaccess.

Here is my rewrite code :

RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /

RewriteRule     ^terms(.*)  terms.php [L,nc]
RewriteRule ^formgate\/([a-zA-Z0-9]{64,64})$ formgate.php?g=$1 [L,nc]

When the page loads it functions properly except that all of my stylesheets, javascript files, etc do not load properly. If you check the errors it states 404 not found and that $ is not defined. Thanks

Answer 1

This problem often comes from using relative URL's to stylesheets or javascript files and combining it with a virtual directory structure. If you have a rewrite like this:

RewriteRule ^articles/(.*)$ articles.php

Then you have a URL like:

http://example.com/articles/2011/03/14/title-of-the-article

which contains the HTML:

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="css/general.css" />

no matter if your file artices.php resides in the root of your web directory the browser knows nothing about it as the matters of mod_rewrite are hidden from the browser. So it will ask for the file:

http://example.com/articles/2011/03/14/title-of-the-article/css/general.css

which obviously does not exist. So I recommend specifying URL's relative to your web root. For example:

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/css/general.css" />

Mind the / in front of theURL.

Please note the following: when your URL starts with a / character it means a path relative to the root of the webpage. Check out this example directurey structure:

/
    /index.html
    /afolder
        /afolder/stylesheets
            /afolder/stylesheets/first.css
            /afolder/stylesheets/second.css
        /afolder/images
            /afolder/images/a.jpg
    /otherfolder
        /otherfolder/something.html