.htaccess opencart redirect 301 - .htaccess

Question

I just migrate my site from asp to opencart. In .htaccess I would like to do some redirect so that my customer can use back the old link to access
inside .htaccess
redirect 301 /contact.asp http://www.example.com/index.php?route=information/contact_us
redirect 301 /downloads.asp http://www.example.com/downloads
For Contact Us that work perfectly, however, for the downloads url, it didn't work correct.
when I access to http://www.example.com/downloads.asp it will redirect to http://www.example.com/downloads?_route_=downloads.asp
and Opencart show it is page not found.
For the http://www.example.com/downloads we had set SEO friendly URL in the backend system.
We able to access with
http://www.example.com/information/downloads
http://www.example.com/downloads
but we not able to access with normal link
http://www.example.com/index.php?route=information/downloads
The folowing is my full .htaccess
# Prevent Direct Access to files
<FilesMatch "\.(tpl|ini)">
Order deny,allow
Deny from all
</FilesMatch>
# SEO URL Settings
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^([^?]*) index.php?_route_=$1 [L,QSA]
redirect 301 /contact.asp http://www.example.com/index.php?route=information/contact_us
redirect 301 /downloads.asp http://www.example.com/downloads
============ANOTHER TESTING========================
I did some testing on this on my localhost I found out it is a quit interesting result. However, my problem still haven't solve.
I run the .htaccess from http://localhost/example and http://example (added virtual directory)
For http://localhost/example
redirect 301 /example/downloads.asp http://localhost/example/downloads/
and
For http://example
redirect 301 /downloads.asp http://example/downloads/
Then I tried, redirect to my live version link, from localhost (http://example)
redirect 301 /downloads.asp http://www.example.com/downloads/
I access to http://example/downloads.asp
The browser redirect to me
http://www.example.com/downloads?route=downloads.asp
NOTED
In LIVE version, I did not added any redirect code [VERY SURE FOR THIS]
But in Live version, I am to access directly with enter
http://www.example.com/downloads
I am not sure why from localhost redirect 301 to live version will come out
http://www.example.com/downloads?route=downloads.asp
Any idea?

Answer 1

Solution Found:
.htaccess redirect 301 working with opencart v1.5.4.1
Additional code needed for... (and credits of this fix):
https://github.com/opencart/opencart/pull/142
... replace contents of:
- catalog/controller/common/seo_url.php
- system/library/url.php
Redirect Fine:
RewriteRule contacto http:....com/index.php?route=information/contact [R=301,L]
Redirect Not Working:
redirect 301 contacto http:....com/index.php?route=information/contact
Verified.

Answer 2

Put it in front of router. Also add $ after .asp and ^ in front.
# Prevent Direct Access to files
<FilesMatch "\.(tpl|ini)">
Order deny,allow
Deny from all
</FilesMatch>
# SEO URL Settings
RewriteEngine On
redirect 301 ^contact.asp$ http://www.example.com/index.php?route=information/contact_us
redirect 301 ^downloads.asp$ http://www.example.com/downloads
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^([^?]*) index.php?_route_=$1 [L,QSA]
Why don't you redirect contact to /information/contact_us instead of index.php?route=information/contact_us ?

Answer 3

You can try a "?" at the end of the redirect url if it is not present there like 2nd url(it worked for me) :
redirect 301 /contact.asp http://www.example.com/index.php?route=information/contact_us
redirect 301 /downloads.asp http://www.example.com/downloads?