Permalinks with mod_rewrite

Question

Is it possible to make a short URL rule so that every word (except the root folders) after http://mydomain.com/ will get redirected to /index.php?permalink=$1 ?

examples:

http://mydomain.com/ - goto index.php (standard). http://mydomain.com/word - goto index.php?permalink=word

My .htaccess looks like this right now:

Options +FollowSymLinks

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /

RewriteRule /page/([0-9]+) /?page=$1

Answer 1

Try this:

  RewriteRule ^.*/(\w+)\b$ /index.php?permalink=$1

^ Assert position at the beginning of a line.
.*/ Match any single character or nothing, until the last /.
(\w+) Match letters, digits, underscores, at least one char, and capture it as a group number 1.
\b Assert position at a word boundary.
$ Assert position at the end of a line.

Thus:

http://mydomain.com/word1 becomes /index.php?permalink=word1
http://mydomain.com/publish_files/word2 becomes /index.php?permalink=word2

For your request on comments, try this, but I haven't tested it yet:

  RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^(http://)?{HTTP_HOST}/[^/]+/.*$ [NC]
  RewriteRule ^.*$ /index.php
  RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^(http://)?{HTTP_HOST}/\w+$ [NC]
  RewriteRule ^.*/(\w+)$ /index.php?permalink=$1