All those new mod_rewrite rules in 1.3dev .htaccess?

I really don't know. They will of course add some overhead, but I doubt Apache parses the rules every time. It will of course have to execute the regular expressions but the actual parsing must be cached.

I will keep the mod_security problem in mind. However, it's more a server configuration issue than a PunBB issue. Most users run their forums hosted by large hosting companies and one must assume they are aware of the issue.

you can create a rewrite map that does the exact same thing as your rewriter.php and does so inside the rewrite process.

whether the rerouting is done internally in apache, or externally through one homogeneous php script, its still doing the same thing, and I'd tend to bet on apache's solution being the faster implementation.

I've seen diagrams of apache's request routing and whether or not you use the rewrite rules, that request goes through the same process, so adding 1 step to your page loading I'd think wouldn't be that you'd notice.

@guardian34: I thought that a regex evaluation could be more resource expensive than a switch-case clause, so I was asking. Do you or MadHatter have some links on this topic? I've searched online but I found nothing that compares those different ways.
Thanks,

Mike

its going to use a regex regardless.  that is just the way it evaluates the match pattern, so even if you have an exact match pattern (meaning no actual matching patterns) its still going to use regex.  and as mentioned the [L] parameter specifies that a correct match will be the last one tested (much like a break in a switch statement).  since switch is implemented as a test condition (like an if statement) on the machine level, yes, technically a switch would be "faster" though not as efficient and a verbose matching syntax (which is why regex exist in the first place), because to test the complex conditions that regex can handle, you're going to go through the same test cases regardless if you have a huge switch statement or a simple regex pattern.

this is the official documentation for the rewrite engine.  I think how it works is pretty plainly stated there.

webservers are fairly complex applications.  regardless of if you're using apache or IIS there are a lot of extra things that happen between request and response.  adding a URL rewrite to a request is not going to affect a webserver like putting a heavy processing script (an infinite loop in code for example).  Your point of diminishing return is almost always going to be the bottleneck caused by slow internet speeds, rather than a client waiting on a webserver to process some 200+ rewrite rules.

Will it be possible to turn the good looking urls off?
I prefer having the normal urls with all the parameters then a sitemap that targets the same pages. This way when the users are browsing they don't throw any rewriting in the server. The sitemap is then only a google landtrack as all the forum navigation links still in the old way. This can be more SE friendly. Google indexes dynamic urls, evendthough they say they dont index so many of those per site, they do. But one thing is indexing the site and other thing is the relevance it gets on search results.
Like, i dont want to have 500000 pages indexed if none of thouse shows in the first page of any search. I prefer to have 100 pages that are all the time getting visitors from google then let those find their way through the site navigation.
That's why i think urls with content mater when it comes to be SE friendly.

I am using punbb 1.2... i don't know if i will upgrade to 1.3 as it goes out. Anyway, i guess the database model will be untouched.
What about the old urls? will they still be working? we cant forget that there are links spread on the web pointing to 1.2 forums that should not be made broken.

So... can i start writing a sitemap or will it be incompatible with punbb 1.3?
BTW... anybody interesed?