Tidy URLs in ExpressionEngine

ExpressionEngine’s strict template_group/template URL structure allows for some wonderfully tidy content organization. However, an annoying downside to this structure is that EE’s URLs tend to be a bit overgrown. For example, say I have a “blog” template group, and I have a “single.php” template within it that I use to display single posts. The URL would look like this:

http://www.mysite.com/index.php/blog/single/the_title_of_the_post

I don’t know about you, but that index.php in the middle there just hurts my brain. There are a number of techniques to get rid of it involving some .htaccess trickery, but I couldn’t find one that worked properly on my hosting setup. But hey, what about just renaming it? EE has a nice little writeup explaining how to do so. I just renamed my index.php to “v1” (with no extension) and now it looks like a nice directory in the URL. Niggling problem solved.

http://www.mysite.com/v1/blog/single/the_title_of_the_post

See, better already! But wait - there’s plenty more you can do here.