mod rewrite - How to ignore access to php files with mod_rewrite?

Question

For example: www.example.com/about.php

I don't want the files with the extension .php to be available to reach, display a 404 page instead.

I have the files in the root folder: content.php about.php footer.php etc... Now i can reach these files by typing in to the adress bar. I want to restrict this.

How can i do that?

Answer 1

A better approach that avoids the overhead and complexity of mod_rewrite is to simply not put files you don't want reached by url in the root folder. You can just put them somewhere else and include them from there; simple and (more) secure, but for some reason this doesn't seem to be common knowledge.

An example structure might be

project/
project/root
project/lib

Your public code (e.g. index.php) would live in project/root, and that would be the website root. Your included code would live in project/lib can be easily included using require, include, etc.

No mod_rewrite. Very simple.