htaccess rewrite

[bsewell]

Hello,
I want to make a simple website, and friendly urls would be a great step towards that. I have been trying this for 2 days without success.

www.mydomain.com/join redirects to www.mydomain.com/index.php?path1=join
www.mydomain.com/forum redirects to www.mydomain.com/index.php?path1=forum
www.mydomain.com/forum/getting-started redirects to www.mydomain.com/index.php?path1=forum&path2=getting-started

These directories do not actually exist. They are going to look like they do.

You should understand what I'm trying to achieve now.

index.php

<?php
global $path1;
global $path2;

$path1="";
$path2="";
if (isset($_GET['path1']))
{
	$path1=$_GET['path1'];
}

if (isset($_GET['path2']))
{
	$path2=$_GET['path2'];
}

//code omitted. Standard XHTML header

if (isset($path1))
{
	switch ($path1)
	{
		case "join":
		include("join.php");
		break;
		case "forum":
		include("forum-index.php");
		break;
		default:
		include("404.php");
	}
}

else
{
	include("start_page.php");
}

And my htaccess:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^([^/]+)/?$ /index.php?path1=$1 [QSA,L]
RewriteRule ^forum/([^/]+)/?$ /index.php?path1=forum&path2=$1 [QSA,L]