.htaccess won't rewrite my url at all - apache

Question

I've been crawling forums for about 2 hours and still haven't found the solution to my problem so I am turning to you guys for help.
My URL looks like this
http://gymbirdz.com/article.php?url=benefits-of-fish-oil
I want it to look like this
http://gymbirdz.com/article/benefits-of-fish-oil
This is my .htaccess request but It does not work and still no luck fixing it :/
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^/?article/([A-Za-z0-9-]+)/?$ /article.php?url=$1 [NC,R=301,L]
Any help is appreciated very much! Thank You
UPDATE
This is how my .htaccess looks from above
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^article/([A-Za-z0-9\-]+)$ article.php?url=$1 [NC,R=301,L,QSA]
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^GET.*index\.php [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/system/.* [NC]
RewriteRule (.*?)index\.php/*(.*) /$1$2 [R=301,NE,L]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.gymbirdz\.com$
RewriteRule ^/?$ "http\:\/\/gymbirdz\.com\/" [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^192\.254\.185\.208
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.gymbirdz.com/$1 [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} libwww-perl.*
RewriteRule .* ? [F,L]

Answer 1

Try this rule your site root .htaccess:
Options +FollowSymLinks -MultiViews
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} libwww-perl [NC]
RewriteRule ^ - [F,L]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.gymbirdz\.com$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^192\.254\.185\.208$
RewriteRule (.*) http://gymbirdz.com/$1 [R=301,NE,L]
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^GET.*index\.php [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/system/.* [NC]
RewriteRule (.*?)index\.php/*(.*) /$1$2 [R=301,NE,L]
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} /article\.php\?url=([^\s&]+) [NC]
RewriteRule ^ /article/%1? [R=302,L,NE]
RewriteRule ^/?article/([\w-]+)/?$ article.php?url=$1 [NC,QSA,L]

Answer 2

Maybe I don't understand your question, but this is from the documentation:
Syntax: RewriteRule Pattern Substitution [flags]
This is your rule:
RewriteRule ^/?article/([A-Za-z0-9-]+)/?$ /article.php?url=$1 [NC,R=301,L]
It appears that you may have the two arguments reversed. Try something like this instead:
RewriteRule ^article.php?url=([\w-]+) /article/$1 [NC,L,R=301,QSA]
This assumes that the .htaccess file is in the same directory as article.php.