enable-pretty-urls.md

Enable pretty URLs

Sometimes users want to share your site URLs via social networks. For example, by default your about page URL looks like http://webproject.ru/index.php?r=site%2Fabout. Let's imagine this link on Facebook page. Do you want to click on it? Most users have no idea what is index.php and what is %2. They trust such link less, so will click less on it. Thus the website owner would lose traffic.

URLs such as the following is better: http://webproject.ru/about. Every user can understand that it is a clear way to get to about page.

Let's enable pretty URLs for our Yii project.

Apache Web server configuration

If you're using Apache you need an extra step. Inside your .htaccess file in your webroot directory or inside location section of your main Apache config add the following lines:

RewriteEngine on
# If a directory or a file exists, use it directly
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
# Otherwise forward it to index.php
RewriteRule . index.php

URL manager configuration

Configure urlManager component in your Yii config file:

'components' => [
    // ...
    'urlManager' => [
        'class' => 'yii\web\UrlManager',
        // Hide index.php
        'showScriptName' => false,
        // Use pretty URLs
        'enablePrettyUrl' => true,
        'rules' => [
        ],
    ],
    // ...
],

Remove site parameter from URL

After previous steps you will get http://webproject.ru/site/about link. site parameter tells nothing helpful to your users. So remove it by additional urlManager rule:

    'rules' => [
        '<alias:\w+>' => 'site/<alias>',
    ],

As a result your URL will look like http://webproject.ru/about.