Simple URL rewrite does not work - .htaccess

Question

First, I know there are several questions of this, but what I experience is that other rules work, like removing the .php extension while this rule does not work:
RewriteRule ^hello$ marketplace [NC,R=301]
This is just a simple test, and it's not working. The URL is still marketplace and not hello. And I have tried to remove all other rules I have and let the rule above be the only existing in my htaccess file, but still, not working.
Any ideas? mod_rewrite is clearly turned on because other rules work.
Tested and not working:
RewriteRule ^marketplace$ /hello [NC,R=301]

Answer 1

Highly recommend you to give a read on this "Apache mod_rewrite Introduction"
Options +FollowSymLinks -MultiViews
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,}\s/+(.*)\.php [NC]
RewriteRule ^ /%1 [R=301,QSA,L]
# Redirect to hello
RewriteRule ^marketplace$ /hello [R=301,NC,L]
# Show the content of marketplace on hello
RewriteRule ^hello$ /marketplace.php [NC,L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/$1\.php -f
RewriteRule ^([^/]+)/?$ $1.php [L]
The above is a fully tested and working rule.
First rule will redirect .php to directory like URL's for example domain.com/marketplace.php becomes domain.com/marketplace.
Second rule redirects marketplace to hello.
Third rule internally redirect hello to marketplace.php so the URL remains hello with the content of marketplace.php.
Last rule will verify it directory does not exist but exist as a php file and internally redirect to it.
So if you access marketplace.php it goes to marketplace then hello and from hello you will see the content of marketplace.php.
If marketplace.php does not exist then you get 404 error.