No problem. Let me see if I can assist.

Regarding your “cars” example, I’d advise using the “register_post_type()” function and creating a custom “cars” post type. This will provide the URL structure you’re looking for, along with a templating structure in the form of the “single.php” file or, for more specific customisations, the “single-car.php” file. You’ll then have access to the appropriate ID when viewing that “car”.

More information on this can be found at: http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/register_post_type

Regarding your “profile” example, I’d recommend using the built in WordPress authors system. Each profile is a username on your website, with a URL that follows the convention of http://domain.com/author/username/. The output of this screen can be customised via the “author.php” template file.

Therefore, in the examples you’ve posted above, the desired results can be achieved without a custom WordPress URL rewrite rule.

I hope this clarifies things.

Cheers,
Matty.

OK.. I have spent a dozen hours on this and believe your article to be the closest thing to what I want to accomplish. I always try to find the solution myself, but as you started out by saying… others seem to LEAVE OUT exactly what you need.

So looking at your code I am hoping there is something you might do to help.
First you should know permalinks are working just fine for me in my WP site.
I totally get all aspects about the built in WP permalink stuff – and its’ all good.

But here’s the deal. And I will be as clear as I can.
I am looking to create a custom rewrite(s) – which is how I came to land on your page.

I have created a template_profile.php for my theme, and certain things on this page will change based on the value of ?id=XX . So for example, if I hit my page at http://mydomain.com/profile/?id=12 … it will go into a folder named ’12′ and pull out a picture from that folder.

or as another example:
http://mydomain.com/cars/?vin=123456

I already have this working exactly as I want.
BUT! the ‘id’ variable in my dream scenario is a username.

So I want the link to look like this:
http://mydomain.com/profile/username

….or….

http://mydomain.com/cars/123456

Side Note: Ideally I would like http://mydomain.com/username but I’m guessing if some bozo’s username is “contact” it would conflict with my contact page – which already exists. So http://mydomain.com/profile/username is totally fine with me.

I can’t seem to get my head around how to do this and make the url look nice.

The big challenge is to pass the (registered) username into the pretty url, get the user_id number from that, and then go into that numbered folder to pull some content out of that folder – to populate the page.

But HOW do I get that number from a /profile/username if the url doesn’t exist yet????? Mod rewrite should be the answer, yes???

I hope this is all clear. And a thousand thanks for any info you can provide. I think the solution might be staring me in the face right here on your page! But I don’t quite get it yet. And Googling this has been difficult because I am not even sure what to google specific to my scenario.

Anyway . Thanks again.

Without seeing the actual code in question, it can be difficult to ascertain the exact cause of the issue.

I’d recommend using a custom post type to handle the vehicle listings, which would take care of the permalinks and custom rewrite rules for you. More on this can be found here on the WordPress Codex.

Cheers,
Matty.

I’m having the same problem too. I’m trying to use this tutorial to eliminate ugly vehicle id’s from our web site, i.e.:

http://www.colwynbaymotorcycles.com/honda/new-honda-bike-stock/view-honda-bike/?v_id=34

and changing it to something like this:

http://www.colwynbaymotorcycles.com/honda/new-honda-bike-stock/view-honda-bike/v_id/34 or even just …/view-honda-bike/34

Problem I just can’t get this to work. My permalink structure is:

/%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%/

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks in advance!

Thanks for your kind words about my tutorial. I’m glad you’ve found it to be useful.

/%postname%/ is causing a conflict with the default rewrite rule, causing it to not know where to turn, effectively. If you’d like to use /%postname%/ (not recommended, as it puts extra load on the system), I’d recommend placing it as a “custom structure” under “Settings -> Permalinks” in your WordPress Admin.

Cheers,
Matty.

$rewrite_keywords_structure = $wp_rewrite->root . “%pagename%/$rewrite_tag/”;

However… my regular permalink’d blog posts don’t work anymore. i.e.
http://example.com/2011/03/hello-world/
now gives a 404.

Any ideas? Having flushed the WordPress default rules, do I have to explicitly put appropriate default ones back in?

Cheers
Mick

I don’t think using `init` or `admin-init` makes much of a difference. It means it’ll either run on init only when in the admin area or on init in general. Either way, init happens and the function doesn’t seem very intensive. Using `admin-init` could possibly increase front-end performance though, as the function would not be running on the front-end. Not sure if the performance difference would be noticeable though.

It looks, to me, like it’s a case of 6 of 1 or half a dozen of the other. Using either method, the function will run at the init stage.

Thanks for the link and quote. I find the WordPress codex to be a useful resource which I use regularly.

Cheers,
Matt.

From: http://codex.wordpress.org/Query_Overview:

“So if you want to modify rewrite rules, you will need to call $wp_rewrite->flush_rules() to force them to recalculate. You’ll need to do this in your plugin’s init action, so that it happens early enough in the process. ”

Cheers…Dan

I’ll look into the call to flush_rewrite_rules.

I’ll be writing a few more posts discussing custom rewrite rules in WordPress, how to work with them and a few advanced uses. These may be followed up with a plugin.

Cheers,
Matt.

Thanks

-Brad