As written:
User requests nice friendly-looking URL
www.example.com/blogs/blahblah.html
and that's what their browser's address bar will say. But what they see on the screen--
well, it depends on this, which is an entirely unrelated piece of code:
If you haven't got index.php set by your DirectoryIndex directive it would also fail.
When people request
www.example.com/directory/
do they in fact get taken to
www.example.com/directory/index.php
? If you are on shared hosting, they will probably have a short list of default index-file names to try. If your index files are called anything else, you have to deal with it yourself in htaccess using mod_dir. Assuming your configuration allows you to do so. But since you are dealing with a rewrite, not a redirect, there's no reason not to write it out in full. Not / but /index.php
Conversely, since you will be rewriting anyway, what's the .html for in the URL? Personally I like them; when I see an extensionless URL my first impulse is to tell it to go home and put some clothes on. But they do seem to be in fashion currently. So if you're using an extension, understand that it isn't in any way necessary. The "blahblah.html" is not an actual page, and therefore it doesn't need an actual extension. You could just as well say "blahblah.blog" and take it from there. (Bad Idea. But you could do it.)
Meanwhile, your user is waiting patiently for the RewriteRule to kick in. They got as far as typing-- or clicking--
www.example.com/blogs/
blahblah.html
or if you prefer
www.example.com/blogs/
blahblah Behind the scenes, your server prepares the page
www.example.com/search-results/index.php
and feeds it the query string
?action=search&type[equal]=Blog&keywords[any_words]=
blahblah This is fine if blahblah corresponds to a pre-existing blog. But you also have to code for blogs that don't exist, including the ones that come from malformed requests like
www.example.com/blogs/.html
Second part of answer Last time I did this, the questioner stomped off in a huff and was never seen again. But, what the hey. One or more of the following applies to you:
#1 You used to have children
#2 You currently have children
#3 You will have children
#4 You used to be a child
Throw your mind back-- or forward, or sideways-- and consider how long it takes a child to clean its room under parental supervision, compared to how long that same parent could do it on their own. But the time-consuming way leads to a child who knows how to clean its room-- and will grow up to be an adult who knows how to clean up after himself.
That was an analogy ;)
