How to achieve a specialized redirect - .htaccess

I have an odd use for htaccess redirect. I have an affiliate system that uses compiled code to produce it's output. (I hate compiled php by the way as you can't fix the developers goofs).
In some cases the prefix to the theme directory is like this:
html/themes/xblue/....
which works, but in some cases it's like this:
html/themes//....
Leaving out the word "xblue", but otherwise correct.
I need to be able to redirect html/themes// to html/themes/xblue/
I've tried the following redirect statements:
# Redirect 301 /affiliates/includes/html/themes// /affiliates/includes/html/themes/xblue/
# Redirect 301 // /xblue/
Neither one works, but gives an infinite number of redirects and breaks the page.
Do you know how I can redirect "themes//" to "themes/xblue/" ?

Try this rule with negative lookahead as your very first rule:
RedirectMatch 302 ^(.*/themes)/(?!xblue/)(.*)$ /$1/xblue/$2
Make sure to clear your browser cache before testing this rule.

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htaccess Redirect 301 is chaining itself

I have around 100+- redirects in a .htaccess file and some urls are chaining each other.
For example:
Redirect 301 /air-india-trial/air-india-promo-conditions/ /features/
Goes to
/trial/air-india-promo-conditions/
Because of
Redirect 301 /air-india-trial/ /trial/
So the URL is replacing '/air-india-trial/' for '/trial/' because of the 2nd redirect being called. I already tried to put https://example.com/ before the 2nd URL in the Redirect 301 but that doesn't work. Not sure if it matters but the URL /air-india-trial/ doesn't exist on the new website. The domain is the same as the old website tho. Anyone that has an idea to fix those redirect chains?
Redirect 301 /air-india-trial/air-india-promo-conditions/ /features/
Goes to
/trial/air-india-promo-conditions/
Presumably you mean a request for /air-india-trial/air-india-promo-conditions/ ends up being redirected to /trial/air-india-promo-conditions/ (that directive doesn't "go to" anything).
...because of the 2nd redirect being called. I already tried to put https://example.com/ before the 2nd url in the Redirect 301 but that doesn't work.
You can't put https://example.com/ as part of the URL in the first argument - if that is what you are referring to? It simply won't match. It matches against the URL-path only.
Since the Redirect directive is prefix-matching (and everything after the match is copied onto the end of the target URL), you need to order your Redirect directives in order of specificity. The most specific (ie. longest path) redirect needs to be before the less specific redirects.
mod_alias Redirect directives do not "chain" together as you seem to imply.
So, in your example, the following should work to redirect /air-india-trial/air-india-promo-conditions/ to /features/:
Redirect 301 /air-india-trial/air-india-promo-conditions/ /features/
Redirect 301 /air-india-trial/ /trial/
(Although you do perhaps suggest that the directives are already in order (or are you just referring to the order in your question)? In which case there is still a conflict with another directive or you are seeing a cached response.)
You will need to clear your browser cache after making this change as the 301 (permanent) redirect will be cached by the browser.
If you specifically want to redirect only /air-india-trial/ and not /air-india-trial/<something> then you need to use a RedirectMatch directive instead, which matches against a regex and is not prefix-matching. For example:
RedirectMatch 301 ^/air-india-trial/$ /trial/
Also, if you have any mod_rewrite (RewriteRule) redirects then these might conflict. Since different Apache modules runs independently and at different times throughout the request, you should avoid mixing redirects from both modules because of potential conflicts. (mod_rewrite will always run first on Apache 2.4, despite the apparent order of these directives in .htaccess.)

Why does this redirect apply?

I have a simple Redirect in my htaccess file:
Redirect 301 /foobar /johndoe/foobar
unfortunately, this url:
/foobar/barfoo also gets redirected - why? In my understanding, only /foobar should be redirected when using the Redirect command, shouldnt it?
I feel that this is more comfy than writing RewriteRules
As it turns out, Redirect seems to just check if the URL to check is in the beginning of the current path (at least my tests say that, the documentation is not 100% clear about it).
But, to avoid using RewriteRule (since it might be overkill), simple RedirectMatch also works:
RedirectMatch 301 "^/foobar$" "/johndoe/foobar"
I would still be thankful for additional advice, whether this isnt possible to solve without "regex" and/or RewriteRule

301 redirect throws an error saying the page being redirected does not exist

i want to redirect from a page at /roofing/bellevue/index.php to /bellevue-roofing.php I entered the following:
Redirect 301 /roofing/bellevue/index.php http://www.emeraldstate.com/bellevue-roofing.php
into .htaccess in the root directory.
The result of entering www.emeraldstate.com/roofing/bellevue/index.php is:
The requested URL /roofing/bellevue/index.php was not found on this server.
I have checked and rechecked various sources on formatting Redirects and everything seems correct. Can anyone provide a little guidance?
The correct implementation is to avoid specifying the domain name as part of the redirect. Whilst this will more than likely make no difference to your setup, I'm mentioning it anyway.
You'll be better off using RedirectMatch or mod_rewrite (which I prefer):
RedirectMatch 301 ^/roofing/bellevue/index.php$ /bellevue-roofing.php
Or use mod_rewrite (make sure that the extension is enabled, which it generally is):
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^/roofing/bellevue/index.php$ /bellevue-roofing.php [R=301,L]

URL rewrites issues

We are having a problem with URL rewrites on an apache server using .htaccess.
Goal: to have the following URL stripped of its category & subcategory while leaving the generic redirect in place.
Test 1:
Redirect 301 /category/subcategory/product http://www.site.com/product
Redirect works perfectly. A single redirect to the desired page.
Test 2:
RedirectMatch 301 ^/category/subcategory/.*$ http://www.site.com/category/subcategory
Redirect on its own works perfectly for all URLs desired.
The problem is when we have both URLs in a clean .htaccess file, and the redirects are in the proper order (specific first, then general), the general redirect is being used.
Test 3:
Redirect 301 /category/subcategory/product http://www.site.com/product
RedirectMatch 301 ^/category/subcategory/.*$ http://www.site.com/category/subcategory
When we visit www.site.com/category/subcategory/product, the result is www.site.com/category/subcategory/product, That is not the desired result. Instead, we want the URL to be www.site.com/category/subcategory/product,
We have even tried modified the Redirect to:
Redirect 301 /category/subcategory/product http://www.site.com/product [L]
It made no difference.
Please help!
EDIT: Added 3/25/2014
What we are trying to do is provide specific redirects for a group of known products from their old product page to the new product page. We are also trying to add a "catch all" redirect for the remaining unknown products to the category page.
Here is an actual example redirect which works:
Redirect 301 /womens/western-dresses/stetson-cream-empire-waist-ls-western-dress http://www.site.com/stetson-cream-empire-waist-ls-western-dress
If the above redirect is added to the .htaccess file, it works perfectly on its own.
Here is a second example redirect which works:
RedirectMatch 301 ^/womens/western-dresses/.*$ http://www.site.com/womens/western-dresses
The problem is if we have both of the rules together in .htaccess, in the same order as above, the second rule is always triggered. We try to access www.site.com/womens/western-dresses/stetson-cream-empire-waist-ls-western-dress and the result is www.site.com/womens/western-dresses instead of the desired result of www.site.com/stetson-cream-empire-waist-ls-western-dress
For clarity:
if we remove the .htaccess file, the URL 404s
if only the first rule is listed, it triggers perfectly
if only the second rule is listed, the second rule triggers perfectly
if both rules are listed, the second rule triggers.
We have deleted all redirects from the .htaccess file. The only redirects are the below two lines. The issue remains where the first redirect is ignored. We have tried changing the start of the first redirect to ^/womens and ^womens but that change had no effect.
Redirect 301 /womens/western-dresses/stetson-cream-empire-waist-ls-western-dress http://www.site.com/stetson-cream-empire-waist-ls-western-dress
RedirectMatch 301 ^/womens/western-dresses/.*$ http://www.site.com/womens/western-dresses
Your post is a little confusing, so I may be misunderstanding what you are trying to do.
If memory serves, you should not include a leading slash in your pattern when using these directives in a .htaccess file. That usage is reserved for httpd.conf. When these directives are used in a .htaccess file, the leading path components have already been stripped by mod_access. I am guessing this is the cause of your troubles.
For example, this should work (not tested):
Redirect 301 ^category/subcategory/product http://www.site.com/product
RedirectMatch 301 ^category/subcategory/.* http://www.site.com/category/subcategory
As an aside, [L] is mod_rewrite lingo. "Redirect" and "RedirectMatch" are part of mod_access.
EDIT 3/25:
Redirect and RedirectMatch can be fussy when used in .htaccess files, particularly when dealing with non-existent folders and mixed directives. Can I suggest you move directly to mod_rewrite? While it has a steep learning curve, you will never go back once you get the hang of it.
# Assuming you are in a .htaccess under DocumentRoot:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^category/subcategory/product1\.html$ /product1.html [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^category/subcategory/product2\.html$ /product2.html [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^category/subcategory/.* /category/subcategory [R=301,L]
As an aside, this looks like a good candidate for RewriteMap, although you will need to declare the map in your httpd.conf.

301 redirect using regular expression in .htaccess

I have suddenly been hit with hundreds of 404 crawl errors to pages which must have been on a previous site (though I thought I'd got them all...). It's a bit strange as I've never seen any page with index.php in it, yet all the errors start with index.php/xxxxx.
So, I want to do the following:
redirect 301 index.php/<wildcard> http://www.example.com
in the .htaccess file.
Can someone tell me whether this is correct, and what I have to put in the <wildcard> place if it is? If this is incorrect, what is the code to accomplish this?
You can use a the Redirect directive in the htaccess file and do a simple regular expression assuming your site doesn't use /index.php/query/parameters like some PHP frameworks do.
Redirect 301 /index.php/(.+) http://www.mysite.com

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