htaccess shortening url - .htaccess

Question

i would like to shorten
www.site.com/product/info/laptop to www.site.com/laptop
I used
RewriteRule ^(.+)$ /product/info/$1
but i get 500 Internal Server Error
when i try,
RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9_\s\'~%,:!?()_=&-]+)$ /product/info/$1
it works but i want to support the period as well, so when I include .
RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9_\s\'~%,:!?()\._=&-]+)$ /product/info/$1
It gives me 500 Internal Server Error
Could you explain what is going on?
Thank you

Answer 1

Try the following:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/product/info/(.*)$
RewriteRule ^(.*)?$ /%2 [R=301,L]
That will redirect the browser from www.example.com/product/info/laptop to www.example.com/laptop with a "Moved Permanently" header.
If you mean you wish the shorter URL to point to the longer URL internally, then you must avoid circular redirections:
RewriteRule ^product/info/.*$ - [L] # don't redirect again
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /product/info/$1 [L] # redirect everything else
The first line will stop trying to redirect www.example.com/product/info/laptop to www.example.com/product/info/product/info/laptop, and so-on.
Edit
Based on your comment, it looks like you're also trying to redirect everything except img, phpmyadmin, etc, to index?whatever - You have to rearrange it all a bit now, something like this:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/(index\.php|img|phpmyadmin|images|user|wmd|FCKeditor|map|jscalendar|aurigma|xajax_js|css|js|include|floatbox|helper|styles|ajax|robots\.txt|favicon\.ico|product/info/(.*))
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ - [L] # don't redirect these
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /product/info/$1 # redirect everything else
I'm not 100% on the "product/info/(.*)" part of the first rewrite. If that doesn't work, try this:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/(index\.php|img|phpmyadmin|images|user|wmd|FCKeditor|map|jscalendar|aurigma|xajax_js|css|js|include|floatbox|helper|styles|ajax|robots\.txt|favicon\.ico)
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ - [L] # don't redirect these
RewriteRule ^product/info/.*$ - [L] # don't redirect again
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /product/info/$1 [L] # redirect everything else
Edit 2
Final answer based on your comment:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/(index\.php|img|phpmyadmin|images|user|wmd|FCKeditor|map|jscalendar|aurigma|xajax_js|css|js|include|floatbox|helper|styles|ajax|robots\.txt|favicon\.ico)
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ - [L] # don't redirect these
# pass controllers to index.php
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/(home|browse|calendar|star|member|enter|product)
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php?$1 [L]
# pass other things than controllers to /index.php?/product/info/$1
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php?/product/info/$1 [L] # redirect everything else