what is URL rewriting?

[michael Amaral]

If you were writing a letter to your bank, you would probably open your word processor and create a file named something like lettertobank.doc. The file might sit in your Documents directory, with a full path like C:WindowsusersjulieDocumentslettertobank.doc. One file path = one document.
Similarly, if you were creating a banking website, you might create a page named page1.html, upload it, and then point your browser to*. One URL = one resource. In this case, the resource is a physical Web page, but it could be a page or product drawn from a CMS.

URL rewriting changes all that. It allows you to completely separate the URL from the resource. With URL rewriting, you could have*taking the user to*…/page1.html*or to*…/about-us/*or to*…/about-this-website-and-me/*or to*…/youll-never-find-out-about-me-hahaha-Xy2834/. Or to all of these. It’s a bit like shortcuts or symbolic links on your hard drive. One URL = one way to find a resource.
With URL rewriting, the URL and the resource that it leads to can be completely independent of each other. In practice, they’re usually not wholly independent: the URL usually contains some code or number or name that enables the CMS to look up the resource. But in theory, this is what URL rewriting provides: a complete separation.