301 Redirect - variable in the old url - .htaccess

Question

I have several urls on a Joomla site which have been indexed and I need to 301 redirect them into some new pages. The old URL is formed like this:
http://www.mydomain.com/en/wfmenuconfig/family/family-disease/177-category-english?start=20
I want it to go to:
http://www.mydomain.com/en/family-members/family-disease
I tried using:
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^start=(.*)$
RewriteRule ^/en/wfmenuconfig/family/family-disease/177-category-english$ http://www.www.mydoamin.com/en/family-members/family-disease%1 [R=301,L]
I've tried several answers on here but nothing seems to be working.
htaccess 301 redirect dynamic url
and
301 Redirecting URLs based on GET variables in .htaccess
Any ideas what I should try next? (I've tried a normal redirect 301)

Answer 1

You've almost got it. You need to remove the leading slash from your rule's pattern because it's removed from the URI when applying rules from an htaccess file:
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^start=(.*)$
RewriteRule ^en/wfmenuconfig/family/family-disease/177-category-english$ /en/family-members/family-disease%1? [R=301,L]
You also don't need the http://www.www.mydoamin.com bit (2 sets of www). At the end of your target, you have family-disease%1, which means if start=20 then the end of your URL will look like: family-disease20. Is that right?

Answer 2

The new URL doesn't have the query string in it, so it is just stripping of the last URL path part. If you want it hardcoded
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^start=
RewriteRule ^en/wfmenuconfig/family/family-disease/177-category-english$ /en/family-members/family-disease? [R,L]
or a little bit more flexible
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^start=
RewriteRule ^en/wfmenuconfig/family/family-disease/.+$ /en/family-members/family-disease? [R,L]
or if you just want to keep two levels after en/wfmenuconfig
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^start=
RewriteRule ^en/wfmenuconfig/(.+?/.+?)/ /en/$1? [R,L]
Never test with 301 enabled, see this answer Tips for debugging .htaccess rewrite rules for details.

Answer 3

If you just want to redirect http://www.mydomain.com/en/wfmenuconfig/family/family-disease/177-category-english?start=$var into http://www.mydomain.com/en/family-members/family-disease, then you must try these directives:
# once per .htaccess file
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} start=([0-9]*)
RewriteRule ^en/wfmenuconfig/family/family-disease/177-category-english /en/family-members/family-disease [R=301,L]
But if that's not what you want, but to redirect http://www.mydomain.com/en/wfmenuconfig/family/family-disease/177-category-english?start=$var into http://www.mydomain.com/en/family-members/family-disease$var then you could check this one:
# once per .htaccess file
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} start=([0-9]*)
RewriteRule ^en/wfmenuconfig/family/family-disease/177-category-english /en/family-members/family-disease%1 [R=301,L]
Now, give this one a little more try if it will work. If it's not, then find any suspicious why this code is not working:
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /en/
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} start=([0-9]*)
RewriteRule ^wfmenuconfig/family/family-disease/177-category-english /family-members/family-disease [R]
And go to http://www.mydomain.com/en/wfmenuconfig/family/family-disease/177-category-english?start=$AnyNumber if it's redirecting into http://www.mydomain.com/en/family-members/family-disease just make sure that your web server have mod_rewrite.

Answer 4

I just wanted to throw this out there, I was also having trouble getting the RewriteRule to work. I have a client that upgraded to a WordPress powered site from .asp pages. What I had to do to get this to work is insert the RewriteCond and RewriteRule in the htaccess file BEFORE the "# BEGIN WordPress" section. Now it works just as it should.
This is posted way late, but hopefully it helps someone else out there running into the same issue.
Doesn't Work:
# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^var=somestring$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^oldpage\.asp$ http://www.domain.com/newpage? [R=301,L]
Does Work:
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^var=somestring$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^oldpage\.asp$ http://www.domain.com/newpage? [R=301,L]
# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress
Order of operations must be important =)