I'm having an issue with some htaccess rules which I thought would be simple. I have some nice SEO friendly URL rewriting in place as below
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^(index\.php|/images|/templates|/views|/ajax|/uploads|/robots\.txt|/sitemap\.xml|/favicon\.ico|/scripts|/cron|/combine.php|/js|/css)
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?ref=$1&%{QUERY_STRING} [L]
This all works well and I want to keep this. I also wish to rewrite some old pages which Google WMT is reporting as 404's to the new equivalent and for that I'd like to use:
Redirect 301 /about_us http://example.com/about-us
The problem I have is that the URL that the browser is directed to is:
http://example.com/about-us?ref=about_us
The about_us is the old link and about-us is the correct link. If the htaccess redirected to example.com/about-us then the other SEO friendly rewrite rule will pick it up and show the page but eh extra ?ref= parameter is confusing it. I am guessing the two rules are conflicting to a degree but is there a way to get the two rules to work together e.g. redirect without the extra ?ref= parameter? My knowledge of htaccess is basic to say the least so I am a little stuck on this one.
Thanks in advance
Redirect and RedirectMatch are part of mod_alias, while the rewrite rules are part of mod_rewrite. The problem you're running into is when you mix the two, both modules affect the same request, thus two things happen when you only want one. In this case, you need to stick with just mod_rewrite and use this instead:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^about_us /about-us [L,R=301]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^(index\.php|/images|/templates|/views|/ajax|/uploads|/robots\.txt|/sitemap\.xml|/favicon\.ico|/scripts|/cron|/combine.php|/js|/css)
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?ref=$1&%{QUERY_STRING} [L]
Note that the rule that redirects comes before the rule that routes to index.php.
Related
I am changing my website from a dynamic CMS-system (Umbraco) to a static classic .HTML. It is the on the same domain, but the URL will change.
Example: The URL is changing from:
www.example.com/information
To:
www.example.com/info.html
My question is:
What is the best way to redirect while keeping the best SEO page rank.
I am thinking about 301 redirect through .htaccess, but I am not sure if I should redirect my new to .html urls to the old dynamic …/example - or the other way?
Or maybe there is a different better way?
I do have a fine 404.
Also I need the right redirect code for .htaccess - if that's the right way.
I hope you guys can help me out.
I haven't try anything out yet, because I don't wanna do 301 before the site go live.
You need to implement 301 redirects from the old URL to the new URL in order to preserve SEO and ensure that any "old" links that have been bookmarked or linked to from other websites still work.
Exactly how you implement the 301 redirect (either in your server-side script or in .htaccess) does not really matter. However, if you are moving to an entirely static site then .htaccess is likely the only option you have.
I am not sure if I should redirect my new to .html urls to the old dynamic …/example - or the other way?
You need to redirect from the "old" URLs to the "new" URLs that you are using/linking to on the new site. (It makes no sense to redirect the other way as that would just break everything!)
You can probably just use the simple mod_alias Redirect directive.
For example, to 301 redirect from /information to /info.html you could do the following:
Redirect 301 /information /info.html
Bear in mind that 301 redirects are cached persistently by the browser. To prevent caching issues it is advisable to test first with a 302 (temporary) redirect.
Have you considered keeping the same URLs? This would obviously negate the need for implementing redirects. You could employ URL-rewriting if the underlying file is called info.html. For example, using mod_rewrite:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^information$ info.html [L]
The above would internally rewrite a request for /information to info.html. The user only sees /information in the browser address bar, but info.html is served from your site.
Taking this further, it would be easier if the new "file" is simply the same as the old URL, just with a .html extension. For example, the URL is /information and the underlying file is information.html. You can then use a single rule to rewrite all your URLs. For example:
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/$1.html -f
RewriteRule ^([^/.]+)$ $1.html [L]
The above assumes the old URLs do not contain additional slashes (ie. consist of a single path segment. In other words, all files are in the document root) and do not contain dots.
White
I finally got my page ready to go live, and i changed all my new URLS to the same name as the old URL, just with a .html extension - as u said. After that i used:
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/$1.html -f
RewriteRule ^([^/.]+)$ $1.html [L]
And it works fine.
I do have a question about if a "RewriteRule ^(.*).html$ /$1 [L,R=301]" would be better? I mean both "/page.html" and "/page/" works, and this could mess with my former SEO ranking?
Also: what do u think of this:
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} /([^.]+)\.html [NC]
RewriteRule ^ /%1 [NC,L,R]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.html -f
RewriteRule ^ %{REQUEST_URI}.html [NC,L]
RewriteRule ^(.*)\.html$ /$1 [L,R=301]
And by the way. Do you use "page.html" or just "/page" in your href to prevent the .html showing?
//MM
I've taken my site down for some prolonged maintenance and am using mod_rewrite to send all requests to a single page: www.mysite.com/temp/503.php
This is my .htaccess file which works fine.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/temp/503.php [NC]
RewriteRule .* /temp/503.php [R,L]
However, what I'd also like to be able to do is to hide /temp/503.php in the resulting URL from the visitor.
I know this is perhaps trivial and I'm sure fairly simple to achieve, but with my limited mod_rewrite skills I can't seem to get it to work.
Any help would be much appreciated.
Thanks.
Just get rid of the R flag in the rewrite rule, which tells the rule to redirect the request, thus changing the URL in the browser's location bar. So the rule would look like:
RewriteRule .* /temp/503.php [L]
which internally rewrites the requested URI instead of externally telling the browser that it's been moved to a new URL.
We have an existing site, let's call it ourdomain.com. We moved content over from a site that is shutting down, let's call it legacydomain.com. We pointed the legacy domain at our server to the /public_html/ folder.
What I need is an .htaccess that will redirect legacydomain.com or legacydomain/anything-here to ourdomain.com/legacydomain/ with nothing else appended to the URL.
However, I also need a few specific URLs to redirect to certain destinations, and they don't really follow a pattern. For example:
legacydomain.com/something.html to ourdomain.com/legacydomain/something.html
legacydomain.com/another.html to ourdomain.com/legacydomain/folder/another.html
This is what I have tried:
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.legacydomain\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.ourdomain.com/legacydomain/$1 [R=301,L]
Redirect 301 /something.html http://www.ourdomain.com/legacydomain/another.html
It mostly works, but if I visit legacydomain.com/anything-here it doesn't even attempt to rewrite, it just keeps the domain the same and gives a 404. And also I have a feeling that even if it did work, something like legacydomain.com/anything-here/more-stuff would get rewritten as ourdomain.com/legacydomain/anything-here/more-stuff which I don't want.
Only other thing in the .htaccess is rewriting non-www to www, and the standard WordPress stuff. Any guidance would be greatly appreciated. Everything above should have an http:// and www in front for the examples, but it wouldn't let me post that many "links".
For each specific rewrite you would need two lines, as follows. Depending on your existing config you may need to add a slash at the beginning of the RewriteRule in front of something.html if this doesn't work.
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} legacydomain.com
RewriteRule something.html http://ourdomain.com/legacydomain/something.html [R=301,L]
Then you would use a catch-all for everything else.
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} legacydomain.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://ourdomain.com/legacydomain/ [R=301,L]
Personally, I would go for the simplest solution which doesn't use mod_rewrite. First, just redirect the specific pages to wherever they need to go.
Redirect 301 /something.html http://ourdomain.com/legacydomain/something.html
Redirect 301 /another.html http://ourdomain.com/legacydomain/another.html
Then, simply redirect everything else to the base URL.
RedirectMatch 301 (.*) http://ourdomain.com/legacydomain/
These must be put in your .htaccess file before the RewriteEngine on statement.
I've got a .htaccess file that has got a rewrite rule in it as follows which works fine:
RewriteRule ^solicitorsin([^/]+)/all/([0-9]+)$ /search/searchresults.php?county=$1&page=$2 [L]
What I'm looking to do is to keep using this for if the page variable is 2 or higher, but if it's 1 I want to 301 redirect to a separate url (the same site) say http://www.domain.com/solicitorsinCOUNTY/
The problem is that if I try doing this using a 301 redirect or a rewrite rule it still performs the above rewrite rule as well so I end up with http://www.domain.com/solicitorsinCOUNTY/?county=COUNTY&page=1
I haven't done much with .htaccess before so I'm not even sure if this is possible, can anyone help please? It would be much appreciated.
If you are using a rewrite rule, then put the rule for page=1 above the other rule and make sure you have the [L] flag.
Alternatively, you can use RewriteCond to prevent the rule from being run on specific URLS like this:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^solicitorsin([^/]+)/all/1$
RewriteRule ^solicitorsin([^/]+)/all/([0-9]+)$ /search/searchresults.php?county=$1&page=$2 [L]
I'm working in an old CMS that uses htaccess to rewrite URIs with GET variables into something more user friendly.
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^animals/(.*)/ secondary.php?page=$1
RewriteRule ^animals/(.*) secondary.php?page=$1
which results (correctly) in
http://www.example.com/animals/duck
The problem is I now need to redirect some of those pages to new pages. I've tried:
Redirect 301 /animals/goose http://www.example.com/animals/fowl
The redirect almost works, but it adds "?page=goose" to the end of the rewritten URI:
http://www.example.com/animals/fowl?page=goose
I've tried using RewriteRule as well as RewriteCond, but unfortunatley I'm having no luck. Any help would be immensely appreciated.
Try placing this before the other rules instead of the Redirect statement. R=301 is for the redirect and L signals that the rule in question is the last rule to be processed.
RewriteRule ^animals/goose /animals/fowl [R=301,L]
Also you can easily make the slash (just like any other character) optional with a question mark, instead of having two rules.
RewriteRule ^animals/(.*)/?$ secondary.php?page=$1