I am new to CodeIgniter. I have an XAMPP server on Windows 8. Everything is fine, but the problem is about my URL, it doesn't look friendly. It looks like localhost/ci/index.php/site/home (where ci is my root folder for CodeIgniter). I want to make the URL more clean, like localhost/ci/home, how can I do it?

My CodeIgniter version is 2.1.2.

I have done some research already, but in most of the cases it says to change the .htaccess file of CodeIgniter. But I have nothing in the .htaccess file; it's empty, except the line "Deny from all".

You can do this, in config/config.php:

$config['base_url'] = 'http://'.$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST']; //you can also leave blank this CI tend to find this by himself
$config['index_page'] = '';

And try the following .htaccess. I use it for many sites, and it satisfies me.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php/$1 [L]

If it is not working yet, use a phpinfo(); and check if mod_rewrite is enabled. If it is not enabled, you can follow the instructions in Stack Overflow question How do you enable mod_rewrite? to enable that.

If it is not working yet and mod_rewrite is enabled yet, you can try to switch these in config/config.php:

$config['uri_protocol'] = 'AUTO'; //If not working, try one of these:
     'PATH_INFO'        Uses the PATH_INFO
    | 'QUERY_STRING'    Uses the QUERY_STRING
    | 'REQUEST_URI'     Uses the REQUEST_URI
    | 'ORIG_PATH_INFO'  Uses the ORIG_PATH_INFO