.htaccess - force a redirect - .htaccess

I'm working on a website (say, www.domain.com) and want to release part of the site (say, www.domain.com/foo/). How do I forcibly redirect users via .htaccess? Are there any SEO concerns about this? Would it be better if I just modified my application so that the part that is ready is accessible in the root domain?

This will redirect anything to the location of your choice. (.*) matches 0 or more of any char.
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ foo/ [flags]
SEO implications, I'm not certain of, but if you're only ready to release some parts of the site, then there's no issue there as the crawler will get the links you want it to. I'd advise sticking with the .htaccess solution instead of doing any modification as it leaves you free to add or change things more easily at a later stage.

Related

Fake subdomain for different users while still browsing same folder structure

I'd like to create fake subdomains for different users for more vanity, and to make the user (in this case a company) feel they are in a more isolated environment.
For the sake of maintainability, it's important for me that all users still browse the same files, to avoid having to update files for every single user that exists when updating the code.
My website has one public part at root, let's say www.example.com. I'd like to be able to fake the following kind of subdomains:
user1.example.com
The true URL would be www.example.com/member/?user=user1. I'd like for the folder structure to follow the same pattern. www.example.com/member/settings/?user=user1 would appear as user1.example.com/settings/ and so on.
I assume this would best be achieved with .htaccess, no?.
What is the proper .htaccess code for this?
Thank you!
based on the information you've provided here's a bit of .htaccess not tested but might do the job.
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www\.)?example.com$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^user=(.*)$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://%1.example.com/$2? [R=302,L]
Once you find it working fine, replace 302 to 301
Note: It's important to note that you'll need to add a subdomain wildcard
In the end, this was super easy to solve! It wasn't solved the way I first expected though, using .htaccess. I solved it with something called wildcard subdomain.
When you register a new subdomain, enter * in the domain prefix, such as *.example.com. A folder for the wildcard subdomain will be created on your server, such as _wildcard_.example.com. Whenever you access site1.example.com, fakesub.example.com etc, the browser of the visitor will read the files in the wildcard.example.com folder.
The beauty of it all is that if I create a certain subdomain that I want to use, for example forum.example.com, this real subdomain will have priority over the wildcard subdomain, and files will be fetched from the folder for this subdomain, as opposed to from the wildcard subdomain folder.
I use PHP and need to know the subdomain to fetch the appropriate database for the current user. To do this, I use the following code:
$subdomain = explode('.', $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'])[0]
With a wildcard SSL cert I have all of these subdomains secure.

Too many Rewrite Rules in .htaccess

I had to redesign a site last week. The problem is that last urls weren't seo friendly so, in order to avoid Google penalizing my site because too many 404 errors, I have to create a lot of Rewrite Rules because all the content had awful URL's ( and that content had a good position on SERP's).
For example:
RewriteRule ^documents/documents_for_subject/22-ecuaciones-exponenciales-y-logaritmicas http://%{HTTP_HOST}/1o-bachillerato/matematicas-cc.ss/aritmetica-y-algebra/ecuaciones-exponenciales-y-logaritmicas [R=301,L]
Is this a problem on my performance? Is there another solution to my situation?
Thanks
They are in the same domain.
Then an internal redirect is much better. A header redirect sends the new URL to the browser and causes it to make a new request; an internal one is handled, as the name says, internally.
This should work:
RewriteRule ^documents/documents_for_subject/22-ecuaciones-exponenciales-y-logaritmicas /1o-bachillerato/matematicas-cc.ss/aritmetica-y-algebra/ecuaciones-exponenciales-y-logaritmicas [L]
Any performance issues are going to be negligible with this - except maybe if you have many thousands or tens of thousands of individual rules, those may slow down Apache. In that case, if you have access to the central server configuration, put the rules there instead of a .htaccess file, because instructions in the server config get stored in memory and are faster.
A. Yes using 301 is the right way to notify search bots about changed URLs and eventually your old URL's will be removed from search results.
B. You don't need to use %{HTTP_HOST} in your rewrite rule just use it like this:
RewriteRule ^documents/documents_for_subject/22-ecuaciones-exponenciales-y-logaritmicas http://%{HTTP_HOST}/1o-bachillerato/matematicas-cc.ss/aritmetica-y-algebra/ecuaciones-exponenciales-y-logaritmicas [R=301,L]
C. If you have lots of RewriteRules like above I recommend using RewriteMap or else use some scripting support (like PHP) to redirect from old to new URL with 301.

Changing a website domain and redirecting

We're moving a fairly large website from domain.one where it's been for a long time onto domain.two. If people still find links for domain.one we want them to redirect to an appropriate place on domain.two (if possible).
Domian.one is no longer required after the switch. I don't know anything about moving an entire domain so could use some advice on the best way to go about switching whilst retaining the SEO gained over the years.
Any help is appreciated.
Many thanks
Put this in an htaccess file in your root web directory. It will forward your users, and search engines, to the new URL on the new domain.
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]
ADD THE FOLLOWING LINES as posted by John .
Also log in to google webmaster tools->configuration->change of address
and change your url ther so that seacrh engine results are also changed.
THIS iS VERY IMPORTANT

Url duplication with Prestashop SEO

I have an e-commerce developed with the CMS Prestashop.
Yesterday i have seen in my Webmaster Tools that i had some duplicated URL, like this:
www.mysite.com/manufacturers
www.mysite.com/it/manufacturers.
Where 'it' is the suffix of the default and only language for the website.
I've already activate the friendly URL in the back-office and also I've a .htaccess file generated automatically by the generator in the back-office.
What should I do to fix this issue?
PS: Also I think that I've already taken a penalization from googlebot.
First of all let me clarify the Title from the SEO point of view. The problem is from Prestashop side not from SEO side. It is just affecting your SEO.
Now on the problem, Prestashop is notorious for URL problems. I would not recommend you the .htaccess hack solution because every time you regenerate your .htaccess from you backend, you have to manually insert that hack again in it to keep the problem down. And suppose this url problem arises again after sometime for some other url than you have to do it again. It can turn into a nightmare.
So here are some of my personal recommendations...
If this site is critical(which I am assuming), buy a Prestashop url rewriting module from a trusted provider. You will also get a technical support in case this problem arises again in future.
If you can't buy than I would suggest you to ask this question on Prestashop forums, as this is Prestashop specific, to permanently solve this problem. You will most likely to get more instant answers as you will find more people working on Prestashop there than here.
Somewhere either in the htaccess file in your document root, or in the vhost/server config for mysite.com, you'll need to 301 redirect. Now you just need to choose which one you want to keep, the one with /it/ in front or the one without? Let's say you want to point everything to the one without, you'll use one of these:
Using mod_alias:
Redirect 301 /it/manufacturers /manufacturers
Using mod_rewrite:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www\.)?mysite.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^/?it/manufacturers(.*)$ /manufacturers$1 [L,R=301]

Domain redirect Problem

I have a website say domain.old hosted with say 'host-old'
I want to do away with 'host-old' and go with 'host-new'
(so effectively 'host-old' hosting would end)
Also I want a new domain - say 'domain.new'
So now I have 'domain.old' , 'domain.new' and 'host-new' with me
Now I want all my old links are preserved:
viz. http://domain.old/cat1/link1/page1/
redirects to http://domain.new/cat1/link1/page1/
Now please advice what would be the best way to go to set up with the new host.
This is a multi-step process:
Create all the pages at 'host-new' so that 'http://domain.new/cat1/link1/page1/' all work.
Enable mod_rewrite in Apache on 'host-new', and configure as below.
Change the dns entries for 'domain.old' to point to 'host.new'
wait 2-3 days for dns entries to propagate to remainder of the internet.
stop hosting at 'host-old'
The mod_rewrite config you need is:
LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^domain.old$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://domain.new/$1 [NE,R=301,L]
i don't know exactly how this would work but you could parse the URL from the old site and redirect to your new host. You need a common script in your domain.old masterpage that does this for you.
The question would be easier to answer if you specified your platform. If you are on Apache, I'd take a look at mod_rewrite
You'll probably want to provide a 301 (moved permanently) http response.
When you get rid of the old domain, you can't control it any more, and therefore won't get traffic from it. You should transfer the old domain to your new host (not too hard), and then have a redirector running on it - the way other answers suggest.

Resources