As a PHPer you would know what the mod_rewrite is and what the .htaccess file is right? if not a bit of googling would shower with a bunch of tutorials.
Now to the point:)
Being on mac do the following to enable mod_rewrite
1. Check if the module is loaded.
Navigate to apache2 folder
cd /etc/apache2
and open the conf file
sudo vi httpd.conf
Now, search for rewrite and you will and to something like this one
LoadModule rewrite_module libexec/apache2/mod_rewrite.so
if it is commented out, that is if there is a #infront of it, uncomment it and exit
2. Being in the current file, search for AllowOverride and replace the “None” by “All”
3. Got to the directory /etc/apache2/users and open the conf file of your username. Like if your username is gullele, there would be file gullele.conf. Bing inside the file, search for AllowOverride and give it the value of “All”
now restart your server
sudo apachectl restart
Happy rewriting 