Please, explain for total beginner this .htaccess file

Question

I have some troubles understanding how to dynamically put together simple one language website. I would really appreciate if somebody could explain me in baby language what every part of the code below means:

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !\.(php|css|js|gif|png|jpe?g|pdf)$

RewriteRule (.*)$ templates/index.php [L]

Thank you in advance!

Answer 1

# Enable RewriteEngine to rewrite URL patterns
RewriteEngine On

# Every URI that not (! operator) ends with one of .php, .css, .js, .gif, .png, .jpg, .jpeg or .pdf
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !\.(php|css|js|gif|png|jpe?g|pdf)$

# Will be redirected to templates/index.php
RewriteRule (.*)$ templates/index.php [L]

# Sample
# /foo/bar.php -> /foo/bar.php
# /foo/bar.html -> templates/index.php

Answer 2

RewriteEngine On

Turns the rewrite engine on

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !\.(php|css|js|gif|png|jpe?g|pdf)$

Matches all requests which end not with .php, .css etc.

• ! = negates the following expression ("matches not")
• \. = A single point (has to be escaped so it's taken literally. Without the backslash it would match every character)
• (php|css|js|gif|png|jpe?g|pdf) = One of these options. jpe?g means the e is optional, so it matches jpg and jpeg
• $ = the end of the request.

RewriteRule (.*)$ templates/index.php [L]

Redirects all request not matching the regular expression to templates/index.php. [L] means it's the last rule, so not other rules from this .htaccess get applied.