url rewriting help

[slippers]

Hi

I am new to this url rewriting thing and find it all very confusing. Could someone point me to a resource or give a little guidance here onto how to do this or show me a better way of doing it

I have products pages that at present are displayed like this

www.mywebsite.co.uk/products/display.asp?id=1

Can I make it so that the link is

www.mywebsite.co.uk/products/product_name/

In the product list page, all products are currently linked to by the first link above, display.asp?id=2 and so forth. Would these links still work or would I need to change them?

Thanks for the help, if I manage to do it I also have the news section that works in the same way that I would try and change

[RFH Reseller: nick]

First off, you are probably best setting up a single schema to handle all products, and consequently you will need to include the product's id in the rewritten URL, or you would need to apply some logic in your application to take the word and find the relevant product page.
I'm no ISAPI rewrite expert, but it would look something like this:

RewriteRule /products/(.*)/$ /display\.asp\?product_name=$1 [I,U,O]

for example
www.mywebsite.co.uk/products/widget/
becomes
www.mywebsite.co.uk/products/display.asp?product_name=widget

or if you want to keep the same application logic you pass the id in the friendly url

RewriteRule /products/(.*)/(.*)/$ /display\.asp\?id=$1 [I,U,O]

for example
www.mywebsite.co.uk/products/1/widget/
becomes
www.mywebsite.co.uk/products/display.asp?id=1

I've just rushed that off the top of my head, but I hope it acts as a starting point…