While most of us have a passing acquaintance with mod_rewrite, we tend to avoid it when we can, and fear it when we're obliged to use it. This tutorial will show you a dozen or so read-to-use recipes to accomplish common tasks with mod_rewrite, and walk you through each ruleset so that you understand not only what it's doing, but how it's doing it, so that you can customize them for your own needs. We'll also go over mod_rewrite basics, for those of you who are completely new to it, to give you enough vocabulary to follow the recipes.