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I’ve been intrigued by the Wordpress permalink system for quite some time.  I knew it used Apache’s mod_rewrite module, but I never understood it - not even a little bit.

I’ve been working on an update for my church’s podcast site.  Last year I wanted to know how podcasting worked, so I setup a podcast for our church’s sermons.  It worked, and it gained a little popularity at the church, so I decided it was time for a face lift on the site.

One of the things I wanted to incorporate into the site was a “permalink” type of structure, allowing a dynamically-built info page about each sermon.  This is, as you might suspect, one of my Google experiments, and using permalinks like that makes the site “bigger” when viewed through the eyes of a search bot.

So I found this tutorial on mod_rewrite, spent about an hour reading and playing with it, and got the mod_rewrite capabilities working fairly quickly.  Using RewriteRule lines in a .htaccess file is complex, but it’s not too much of a stretch for somebody with a little programming background.  If you’ve got a web server to experiment on, it’s a neat thing to know how to do.
Anyway, this post has 3 main purposes:

1. Help me remember where that tutorial was, so I can figure out other mod_rewrite stuff at a later time.
2. Pimp our church’s podcast site.
3. Provide content here, since it’s been a long week, and I haven’t had time to post anything else.

Have a good Saturday.