having headache wtih codeigniter mod_rewrite ~! - .htaccess

Question

I read lots of the mod_rewrite for codeigniter and lots of them were talking about creating a .htaccess file and inside the file with something like
I'm a beginner with codeigniter so I'm learning from youtube tutorials.
at first I only have apache 2.2 installed to run my php and after using codeigniter with mod_rewrite I realize it's easier to install wamp so I uninstalled apache, mysql then installed wamp which has everything.
After that I continued with the tutorial on youtube about mod_write. I activated the module in wamp.
Created this .htaccess file inside ci_intro which is the root folder
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /ci_intro/
#Removes access to the system folder by users.
#Additionally this will allow you to create a System.php controller,
#previously this would not have been possible.
#'system' can be replaced if you have renamed your system folder.
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^system.*
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php?/$1 [L]
#When your application folder isn't in the system folder
#This snippet prevents user access to the application folder
#Submitted by: Fabdrol
#Rename 'application' to your applications folder name.
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^application.*
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php?/$1 [L]
#Checks to see if the user is attempting to access a valid file,
#such as an image or css document, if this isn't true it sends the
#request to index.php
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?/$1 [L]
</IfModule>
<IfModule !mod_rewrite.c>
# If we don't have mod_rewrite installed, all 404's
# can be sent to index.php, and everything works as normal.
# Submitted by: ElliotHaughin
ErrorDocument 404 /index.php
</IfModule>
I went to the config/config.php and changed
$config['index_page'] = '';
things didn't work. I was getting the 404error then I was trying out few things in
RewriteBase /ci_intro/
and also even deleted the whole project and because I backed things up right before I try the mod_write. Even after I retrieved the backup. I still didn't get the error404 page.
I just keep on getting..
Since I'm using wamp, when I go to my localhost there's a section saying my project which is ci_intro...I click on it the image above comes out.
I put my mouse over to check what's the link showing when mouse over and the link shows
[CODE]http://localhost/ci_intro[CODE]
anyone know what's going on here?

Answer 1

That browser page you are getting, is a result of using a fake or unregistered domain-name... The browser is unable to resolve it to an IP address, so it "helps" you by reinterpreting your request as a search term.
This is happening because you are using "www.domain.tld" instead of "localhost" to access your website.
I'm not sure which WAMP distrubution you are using (there are many "WAMPs"), but your options are:
A) Edit the Windows Hosts file (C:\Windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts) to locally resolve "www.domain.tld" to the local IP addres 127.0.0.1 (and make sure your VirtualHost or Server has that domain name as part of it's ServerName directive).
B) Use "localhost" instead... http://localhost/
C) Use a WAMP that automatically sets up website VirtualHosts for you and has a LocalDNS feature like Wamp-Developer Pro does - so none of the above matters.
Now once you get passed that, there might be some other issues... I'm guessing that .htaccess file should be in the DocumentRoot folder itself.