How should we tag questions about the rewrite system?

Question

We currently have four seven 10 tags that can cover the WP_Rewrite system:

• rewrite with 11 questions
• mod-rewrite with 10 questions
• htaccess with 1 questions
• .htaccess with 22 question
• permalinks with 94 questions
• url with 21 questions
• urls with 21 questions
• url-rewriting with 53 questions
• rewrite-rules with 4 questions
• rewrite-tag with 1 question

I see "the rewrite system" as everything that replaces URLs of the form /index.php?category=fruit&postname=banana with pretty versions of the form /fruit/banana/. So both handling incoming URLs and generating "outgoing" links according to the pretty format can be covered. Incoming URLs can be handled in the mod_rewrite configuration of the server (or the equivalent on non-Apache servers), and/or in the WP::parse_request() function. The rewrite rules that are used are written using the WP_Rewrite class. "Outgoing" URLs are written by get_permalink() and friends. All of these functions have filters that allow you to modify every last detail. Getting the rewrite rules correct for an advanced setup (with custom taxonomies or plugins that want their own URLs) can be a difficult task, which is why it is important to collect these questions under the same tag.

mod-rewrite is not correct, since the rewrites are not always stored in the server config but more and more in WordPress itself.
htaccess is actually just a (standardized) file for placing per-directory server configuration, but mostly used for rewrite stuff in WordPress. The convention on other sites is to use .htaccess.
permalinks is currently the most used tag, but a permalink has a specific meaning in blogging, and most of these probably talk about the subset of pretty permalinks, which are implemented via the WP_Rewrite system.
rewrite is maybe the best catch-all name, but almost nobody used it until now, suggesting the "discoverability" of it is low. url and urls should probably be synonyms.
url-rewriting is more popular than just rewrite - perhaps because people start typing url and then see the autocomplete?
rewrite-rules and rewrite-tag only cover a part of the whole system, and were not used that much until now.

Any suggestions for cleaning this up?

Answer 1

My suggestion would be:

• Use url-rewriting as the main tag for the rewrite system. Make rewrite, rewrite-rules and rewrite-tag synonyms.
• Use mod-rewrite and .htaccess more strictly (and make htaccess without the dot a synonym), only when we refer to the server configuration (and consider migrating to Server Fault, which has very good info on them)
• Use permalinks only for actual discussion of "permanent links to an item"
• Use urls (with url as a synonym) for stuff like URL shorteners, ...

Older suggestions:

• Replace mod-rewrite with apache-mod-rewrite or server-mod-rewrite, to make clear this is about server configuration (I don't care about apache or server, this will depend on how this is called in other servers)
• Replace htaccess with apache-htaccess or server-htaccess, for the same reason
• Use rewrite or pretty-permalinks for the rewrite system. I prefer the former because it is technically more correct, but the latter will likely be easier to stumble upon. We could also make one a synonym of the other of course.