301 Redirect for removed dynamic page

[circusboy]

Hi JD;

I have been reading / testing / pulling hair for hours and cannot get this simple thing to work...

We've taken over an old site that had an affiliate program. Google Sitemaps is telling us there have been several 404s to www.oursite.com/default.asp?AffID=#### (default.asp does not exist any more)- I would like to redirect these to www.oursite.com/newaffiliate-signup/

I've tried everything and can almost get it to work, but usually get the?AffID=### appended to the new url.

This was the closest thing I could find that resembled our situation, but it does not work at all:
RewriteRule ^default.asp?AffID=(.*)$ /newaffiliate-signup/ [L,R=301]

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks in advance.

[DrDoc]

You need to check for the query string separately.

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/default.asp$
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^(¦.*&)AffID=####(&.*¦)$
RewriteRule ^.*$ /newaffiliate-signup/ [L,R=301]

[edited by: DrDoc at 6:14 am (utc) on Sep. 28, 2006]

[jdMorgan]

Another way to do it would be:

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} &?AffID=[^&]* [NC]
RewriteRule ^default\.asp$ http://www.example.com/newaffiliate-signup[b]/?[/b] [R=301,L]

You'll need the question mark at the end of the substitution URL to clear the current query string.

I'm not sure about redirecting to the aff signup page, though. You may end up redirecting visitors who follow an affiliate link to the signup page. If that's not what you want, just change the substitution URL.

Jim

[circusboy]

Thanks Jim;

Worked like a charm. Also thanks for the heads up about affiliate links... I never thought of that.

Regards,

Paul