URL rewrite for usernames/profiles

[moonclamp]

I think this should be quite easy but I haven't got a clue how to do it myself.

I want to use .htaccess so that people can type in something like

mydomain.com/username

in order to get to a profile, which would really be either

mydomain.com/forum/member.php?u=123456 or mydomain.com/forum/member.php?username=username


Can anyone help or at least point me in the right direction?

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Edit Note: this was not meant to be a double post :disappointed:

I've sort of sussed something out but seem to have a problem when a trailing slash is left off

My .htacess is as follows;

RewriteEngine On

RewriteRule (^[-_A-Za-z\ ]*$) forums/member.php?username=$1

However this brings up errors for all other folders under the domain (eg /gallery etc.)

Is there a way to omit certain folder names?