Apache Rewrite
Rewrite might not always be required, when changing one static URL to another URL a Redirect can be used:
#Redirect the base-URL (only) to https
Redirect permanent / https://mydomain.com
#Redirect a particular uri to another url
Redirect permanent /foo http://www.foobar.com/bar
Redirecting http to https / Force use of SSL
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI}
OR
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} ^80$
RedirectRule ^/(.*)$ https://%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301]
Hiding PHP script names
The following will allow http://www.whatever.com/car_info_v4_5.php to be accessed via http://www.whatever.com/cars/
RewriteRule ^cars/?$ car_info_v4_5.php [NC,L]
Force the use of the primary hostname
Having multiple ServerName and/or ServerAlias configs will in normal cases create duplicate sites to search engines as Apache will serve pages containing the domain used by the client. It can therefore be preferable to divert users to a the primary domain of your site, by replacing the domain of the URL. The below Rewrite rule will replace www.anydomain.com/anything if the domain is not www.primarydomain.com .
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\\.primarydomain\\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^/($|/.*) http://www.primarydomain.com/$1 [R=301]
Move a website to another URL/domain
Below is the rewrite in place that redirects users from the previous domain for this website. Redirects www.rogerrabbit.net/wiki/anything to ben.goodacre.name/tech/anything :
RewriteRule ^/wiki($|/.*) http://ben.goodacre.name/tech$1 [NC,R=301,L]