Mod Rewrite tweak to ignore asset directories - .htaccess

I'm configuring Expression Engine on Windows using IIS and have ISAPI v3 Rewrite installed.
It's partly working. The main site and subpages work but needs to be modified because some web page assets are stored in similarly named directories.
The recommended Rewrite provided by Ellislabs is this and I've modified it a little to work with our Win 2012 IIS 8 server:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
# Removes index.php from ExpressionEngine URLs
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^GET.*index\.php [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/system/.* [NC]
RewriteRule (.*?)index\.php/*(.*) abc/$1$2 [R=301,NE,L]
# Directs all EE web requests through the site index file
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ abc/index.php?/$1 [L]
For example, the URL http://oursite.example.com/abc works.
Subpages are mostly working and I suspect this applies to any page really but I'm noticing it on subpages. It removes index.php and mostly loads, such as http://oursite.example.com/abc/subdept/page/
However our developer has some assets kept in a server directory named /uploads/abc/ so if a page refers to this directory, it fails to load those assets because it contains the same name, "abc".
Thus, what is the best way to handle this?
I'm guessing I can either tell it to ignore "uploads/cls" or correct the current Rewrite so that it only looks at the first "abc". I'd like for the solution to cover most similar issues that would arise so I don't have to keep modifying it. We have 12 sites and I'll have to apply the solution to each one.
Everything I've tried hasn't worked.
Also, I thought !-f and !-d would tell it to ignore it if the file or directory existed and that doesn't seem to be working as I'd expect here because these images in /uploads/abc/ do exists.
Thanks!
--
Additionally just trying to get it to work at all, I tried adding a htaccess file with "RewriteEngine Off" in the /uploads/abc/ directory and that failed to fix it.
I also tried to add this after each comment and it fails to fix it:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/excluded-folder/.*$
Seeing how both of the above attempts fail to fix it, I'm wondering if there could be something else going on. Any ideas?

My rewrite was fine. The problem turned out to be code within an Expression Engine template that the in house developer created. They updated the code and the images are loading fine now.

Related

.htaccess cascading conditions

I'm trying to figure out how to manage potentially conflicting conditions in .htaccess
My setup is the following:
- I have a CMS running on a server that can be accessed through myCMSdomain.com where myCMSdomain.com would be CMS home page and myCMSdomain.com/admin would be the admin interface.
- Sites using this CMS should be pointing to myCMSdomain.com/sites/index.php
- Images for all sites are available somewhere behind myCMSdomain.com/admin/images/sitename/...
So here is how I tried to tackle this problem:
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^(www.)?myCMSdomain.com$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule . sites/index.php
With this, all incoming requests coming from other domain names are treated correctly by the index.php file but as images are hosted somewhere else, I'd like to use a rule saying that images should be fetched somewhere else like this:
Visible url format for images is: images-[sitename]/[image_path]
Real location of the images is: admin/site/[sitename]/[image_path]
The following rule works but not in combination with the first rule
RewriteRule images-([a-zA-Z0-9]+)/(.*)$ admin/site/$1/images/$2
Images end up calling index.php instead of using the rule I defined for them.
I have tried to excluse the image directory from the conditions but it doesn't work either:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(images-([a-zA-Z0-9]+)/(.*))
I might have similar issues in the future with other exception so I was wondering if there was a way to handle this.
Thanks!
Laurent
UPDATE 1:
If I use the following rule on top of all other
it works only if I'm using myCMSdomain.com domain name
if I use any other domain like anotherdomain.com, the rule leads to a http 500
RewriteRule images-([a-zA-Z0-9]+)/(.*)$ manager/site/$1/images/$2
So http://www.myCMSdomain.com/images-test/test.jpg leads me to the correct image
But http://www.anotherdomain.com/images-test/test.jpg leads me to a 500 http error code while this domain is pointing correctly to sites/index.php
UPDATE 2:
On Justin's request, here is a view on the physical directory structure on the server
/admin/
/admin/site
/admin/site/site_name/
/admin/site/site_name/images/
/sites/
/sites/js
/sites/css
You can rearrange your conditions logic.
# if www.myCMSdomain.com or myCMSdomain.com -> do nothing
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(?:www\.)?myCMSdomain\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^ - [L]
# if we reach here, this means it's a subdomain/another domain
# images rule
RewriteRule ^images-([^/]+)/(.+)$ /admin/site/$1/images/$2 [L]
# not a file/directory -> sites/index.php
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^ /sites/index.php [L]
It is also possible the way you did but it would be longer to write.
Also, keep in mind that conditions (RewriteCond) are non-cumulative: they are for next rule (RewriteRule) only.
I've been struggling with this issue for some time now but at last I think I have found the issue. It looks like there was something wrong in the domain name configuration, I don't know exactly what but once I had re-saved the mapping of all domains, the htaccess worked the way it should.
In the end I have used Justin's proposition, it looks more future proof than mine.
Thanks for your help and happy new year to all
Laurent

mod_rewrite - Fixing absolute paths

I have a site in a staging environment that sits on an IP in a virtual directory, example: http://0.0.0.0/~drupal. The problem is, I've set up all of the image, css, and js URIs using absolute pathing, example: /path-to-image/img.jpg.
Since the site is sitting in a directory though, /path-to-image/img.jpg points to http://0.0.0.0/path-to-image/img.jpg
instead of http://0.0.0.0/~drupal/path-to-image/img.jpg.
I believe the solution lies in utilizing mod_rewrite, but have been unable to implement a successful solution.
Sidenote: I think it's also possible to modify my host file on my local computer when viewing the site to get a desired effect. However, this won't be an option since there will be many parties viewing the site as it undergoes changes.
You could try adding this to the DOCUMENT ROOT, meaning the directory that http://0.0.0.0/ accesses:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/~drupal%{REQUEST_URI} -f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /~drupal/$1 [L]

htacces - need to fix broken links coming from other sites to mine

I am having an issue where Google Webmaster Tools is reporting a ton of 404 links to my site which are coming from ask.com.
I have tried to get ask.com to fix their side but of course they are not, so now I am stuck with over 11k of bad links to my site which I am suspecting is effecting my ranks right now.
Anyways I have a possible way to 301 them, but not sure how to do it with .htaccess.
Here is the bad link pointing to my site
http://www.freescrabbledictionary.com/sentence-examples/fere-film/feverous/about.php
It should be
http://www.freescrabbledictionary.com/sentence-examples/fere-film/feverous/
Besides the about.php there are other variations of endings as well, I basically need to be able to remove the ending.
Problem is that the URL after /sentence-examples/ can change. The beginning is always:
http://www.freescrabbledictionary.com/sentence-examples/
So basically:
http://www.freescrabbledictionary.com/sentence-examples/<-keep but can change->/<-keep but can change->/<-remove this->
This .htaccess should be placed on the folder before sentence-examples:
RewriteEngine on
# Redirect /sentence-examples/anything/anything/remove to /sentence-examples/anything/anything/
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,}\s/+(sentence-examples/[^/]+/[^/]+)/.* [NC]
RewriteRule ^ /%1/? [R=302,PT,L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^([^/]+)/(.*)$ /sentence-examples/examplesentence.php?havethis=$1&word=$2 [L]
Change 302 to 301 once you confirm it's working as expected.
If you have a CMS installed you might need a different rule to work along with it without conflicting.
Keep in mind that if you had previously tried different redirects using 301 aka permanent redirect its recommended that you use a different browser to test this rule to avoid the caching.
This is possibly quick and dirty but I've done a simple test on localhost and here just to make sure it works.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^sentence-examples/(.*)/(.*)/(.*)\.php http://www.freescrabbledictionary.com/sentence-examples/$1/$2/ [R=301,L]
You can see that I've added wildcard groups (.*) to the RewriteRule so that we can pick up the elements of the URL that we need to aid in proper redirection i.e. $1 and $2. You can also use the third one ($3) to get which destinations are being targeted alot for your SEO needs.
NB: The rule above assumes that that the redirected URL will always be from a .php target and to ensure that you can redirect regardless of whatever comes after the 3rd URL segment replace the RewriteRule with this
RewriteRule ^sentence-examples/(.*)/(.*)/(.*)$ http://www.freescrabbledictionary.com/sentence-examples/$1/$2/ [R=301,L]

mod_rewrite to serve html pages through php script

First of all, I've set my rewrite rule to allow the removal of .html from the URL.
I've also created a php script that I want to serve all of my HTML pages. This way, I can create and link to a simple html page, but it will be handled by my php script.
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}\.html -f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /folder/webpage.php?view=webpage_handler&file=$1.html [L]
So instead of linking to www.mysite.com/page.html I link to www.mysite.com/page which allows me to access the page.html through webpage.php
I would also like to be able link to the page.html in some other cases (without removing the .html extension) and still have my webpage.php handle the page view.
I've tried:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}\.html -f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /folder/webpage.php?view=webpage_handler&file=$1.html [L]
RewriteRule ^(.*\.(html))$ /folder/webpage.php?view=webpage_handler&file=$1 [L]
but this does not work like expected. I'm not sure if the second rule is working at all, and I do believe they're conflicting each other... but I don't know how to fix it.
Is there a safe way to allow me to link to both "/page.html" and "/page" and get my expected outcome?
After more trial and error, I've learned that what I had was actually correct. For some reason my "view" variable was getting erased which was causing my script to not function properly.
My $_GET['view'] variable was blank in webpage.php but the $_GET['file'] variable was set like it should.
I changed from
view=webpage_handler
to
view=handle_webpage
That's it. It works fine now. Obviously it was something I did, but I have no clue what.

.htaccess, proper rewriting of directory and file with same name

As of now my website has a few static pages, one of which is /portfolio. Among other things, my htaccess hides the .html extension. I'd like to add a portfolio directory, but I do not want to move my existing portfolio page into the portfolio directory as the default index file. My /portfolio page is one of my Google sitelinks and I am afraid if it is moved or if the url changes in someway, Google will consider it to be a brand new page.
My problem is once I add the /portfolio/ directory, whenever I try to visit the original /portfolio page, a trailing slash is automatically added and it links to the directory itself.
I've tried countless options, one being a rewrite of /portfolio/ to /portfolio, however this creates an infinite loop. I also tried "DirectorySlash Off" but that only removed the trailing slash while being inside the directory, it didn't revert access to the original /portfolio page.
Ultimately, I would like to keep my /portfolio page as-is, linking to pages inside the directory like so /portfolio/example and if either /portfolio or /portfolio/ is accessed it will result in showing the same page which is outside of the directory without Google thinking it is duplicate content.
A similar question exists here:
.htaccess rewriting url to page or directory though this still resulted in an infinite loop for me for some reason, I'm guess it has something to do with the hidden extensions.
Here's my htaccess-
RewriteEngine On
# HTML to PHP
RemoveHandler .html .htm
AddType application/x-httpd-php .htm .html
# Hide extension
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}\.html -f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1.html
# Force WWW
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mydomain\.net
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.mydomain.net/$1 [R=301,L]
# Blog Subdomain
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^blog.mydomain.net$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.mydomain.net/blog/$1 [R=301,L]
I know it's not a great idea having a directory with the same name as a static page, but I really would rather not alter the existing page and lose the Google sitelink, so a clean and proper way to handle this would be a help.
There are two things going "wrong" here, and two ways to fix it.
The first is that apache "figures out" that there is a directory by the name of "portfolio" before the rewrite conditions are applied. That means that the rewrite conditions are receiving "portfolio/" instead of "portfolio".
Second, the "!-d" rule is specifically avoiding the rewrite that you want to make if there is in fact a directory by that name
Solution 1: Manually re-route requests for the portfolio directory to remove the slash.
# Manually re-route portfolio/ requests to portfolio
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} portfolio/$
RewriteRule ^(.*)/$ $1
# Hide extension
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}\.html -f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1.html
Note the removal of the "!-d" condition.
The downside to this is that you are having to hard-code the "portfolio" edge case directly into the rewrite rules, and will still result in the browser being first redirected to portfolio/
Solution 2: Set DirectorySlash Off and remove directory exists test
# Disable Automatic Directory detection
DirectorySlash Off
# Hide extension
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}\.html -f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1.html
Setting DirectorySlash Off would fix this issue the best, but may break other parts of your site where you actually want the auto DirectorySlash. Best of Luck, and I hope this helps.
Note when testing solution 2, your browser may remember the redirect of "portfolio" to "portfolio/" and perform the redirect before it even sends the request to the server. Be sure to test in a cache-clear, clean environment for best results.

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