I'm trying to create clean urls on my gallery website.
<http://sloanegalleryofart.com>
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^sloanegalleryofart.com$ [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.sloanegalleryofart.com$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/
RewriteRule (.*) /$1 [L]
RewriteRule ^about/$ /about/about.php
RewriteRule ^contact/$ /contact/contact.php
RewriteRule ^shows/$ /shows/shows.php
RewriteRule ^artists/$ /artists/artists.php
RewriteRule ^books/$ /books/books.php
This is your solution
RewriteRule ^artists/([0-9a-zA-Z\-]{1,})?/?$ /artists/artists.php?artist=$1
When you access
http://sloanegalleryofart.com/artists/Gleb-Bogomolov
you will be seen
http://sloanegalleryofart.com/artists/artists.php?artist=Gleb-Bogomolov