Rewrite profile.php?user=username to profile/username - php

Question

I've created a very basic php templating system that I'm using to display a page with this URL: /basedir/index.php?page=home
The home content is served by the script home.php.
With a rewrite rule in .htaccess, I want my url to look like this: /basedir/home.
The problem that I'm having is that I've got stuck when it comes to rewrite one more GET variable that I'm using to display a user's profile. For now the profile page url looks like this: /basedir/profile?user=username.
Now I want it to look like this: /basedir/profile/username.
So far, my .htaccess looks like this:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /basedir/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !.*\.(ico|gif|jpg|jpeg|png|js|css)
RewriteRule ^([^?]*) ?page=$1 [L,QSA]
I have no idea if this is good or if i have to write a completely new .htaccess file.

Answer 1

Based on your code, and my limited understanding, I would guess something like this:
RewriteRule ^profile/([^?]*) ?page=profile&user=$1 [L,QSA]
.. insert it above your RewriteRule ^([^?]*) ?page=$1 [L,QSA].

Answer 2

As you can see at http://htaccess.mwl.be/ your url http://www.example.com/profile/username is converted into http://www.example.com/basedir/?page=profile/username
Now what you need to do is put index.php in basedir where explode the page and retrieve username.
$page = $_GET['page'];
$parts = explode('/', $page);
switch($parts[0]){
case 'profile':
if(isset($parts[1])){
$username = $parts[1];
return doWhatEverYouWantToDoWithUsername($username);
}
return handleJustProfilePage();
default:
return yourDefaultHandler();
}
This approach is called routing you can make way better with some external routing libraries.