Set .htaccess at localhost and hide index.php - php

Question

I wanna ask about .htaccess that could be change the url to be more simple. I have the url in my localhost like this:
localhost/spsb/index.php
and
localhost/spsb/index.php?page=student
The question is:
How can i change the url above being:
localhost/spsb
and
localhost/spsb/student
And where is the correct place to save the .htaccess file?
Thank's a lot for advice
I have been searching a lot everywhere but no one can solve my problem

Answer 1

Use URL Rewriting
For an Apache server:
First, you must activate the rewrite module
(How to active mod_rewrite)
Add those lines to your htaccess to enable rewrite engine
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine On
And this line to rewrite the url as you want
RewriteRule ^spsb\/?$ spsb/index.php
RewriteRule ^spsb/([a-zA-Z]+)$ spsb/index.php?page=$1 [L]
For a Nginx server:
Put these lines in "Location" scope:
if (!-e $request_filename)
{
rewrite ^spsb\/(.*)$ spsb/index.php?page=$1;
}
Note: the location of .htaccess is relative to his level into the site structure, if he is inside the first level site/dir/ the contained rules are limited to site/dir structure
To be unlimited, i suggest to put it into the document root
...Or you can put the rules directly into you vhost configuration
How to check errors:
First have you restarted your server to apply the activated rewrite
modules
(rules from htaccess dont require a restart, only module
modification)
Add following lines to your htaccess after "RewriteEngine On":
RewriteLog "/var/log/apache2/{your_log_site...}" <-- put your path
RewriteLogLevel 7
Check by a "tail -f /var/log/apache2/you_log_site.errorlog" to see if
an error appear at resfresh page