用.htaccess重写网址？

I'm trying to rewrite a url but I can't seem to make it happen.

I just want one working example so I can move on to all pages of my website.

So I have this link:

www.domain.com/article.php?id=1

And I can to change it to:

www.domain.com/article/1/

That's ok for now, later I'll replace the number with the article title.

This is what I have on my .htaccess file:

RewriteEngine On    # Turn on the rewriting engine
RewriteRule    ^article\.php\?id=([0-9]+)$    article/$1/

What is wrong it it? I heard that the .htaccess file needs to be in ASCII if using FTP to save in on the server but I don't know how to do it since I created it by myself.

You can't match against the query string in a rewrite rule, you need to match against %{QUERY_STRING} in a condition:

RewriteEngine On    # Turn on the rewriting engine
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^id=([0-9]+)$
RewriteRule    ^article\.php$    article/%1/? [L]

This internally rewrites your request to /article/1/. The browser will still see the old URL.

What you are more likely looking for is to match against the request:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} \ /+article\.php\?id=([0-9]+)
RewriteRule ^ /article/%1/? [L,R=301]

RewriteRule ^article/([0-9]+)/?$ /article.php?id=$1 [L,QSA]

You are doing this backwards, quite literally.

RewriteRule ^article/([0-9]+)$ /article.php?id=$1