Forum Moderators: phranque
I am trying to redirect from
http://example.com/index.php?subaction=showcomments&id=1234
to the main page http://example.com
However any page with other than id=1234 should not be redirected. The reason is that this page is indexed in SEs but it is no longer available on my site. I have read posts here that suggested that one should redirect with code 301 instead of 404 not found and that actually makes sense as I ultimately want to capture the traffic and not send them away.
I was able to redirect
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} &?=guideline[^&]*
RewriteRule ^$ http://example.com/? [R=301,L]
but can't get the former to work in a similar fashion. Can you please direct me to the right path?
Thanks in advance
Saied
Can you post the code you tried to use? It would help us to discuss this problem.
Jim
I am still a novice but I made sure to read the forum charter and the mod-rewrite guide but wasn't able to find my answer
I tried a few things such as
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} &?subaction=showcomments[^&]*
RewriteRule ^$ http://example.com/? [R=301,L]
and
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} &index.php?subaction=showcomments[^&]*
RewriteRule ^$ http://example.com/? [R=301,L]
Without the index.php I am able to get it to work but with index.php in there i don't seem to be able to. Also adding the ID part is another problem so for example
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} &?subaction=showcomments&ID=1234[^&]*
RewriteRule ^$ http://example.com/? [R=301,L]
doesn't work and it seems like I need two conditions perhaps? I hope it's clear now?
When you have both name/value pairs, are they always in this order?
subaction=showcomments&ID=1234
If their order can change, or if one or more additional name/value pairs might appear between them, then you'd need two conditions.
Jim
rewritecond %{QUERY_string} &?subaction=showcomments&id=1234&?
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ http://example.com/? [R=301,L]
Does that sound about right? It does do what I want
If an ampersand with or without another name/value pair followed "id=1234", then your condition would always fail -- for example, "id=1234&user=bob" would not match, because the character after "4" *is* an ampersand.
The "&?" bounding the name/value pairs simply means, "If there is a character before or after my name/value pairs, it must be an ampersand." This is useful in case you may have other name/value pairs whose beginnings or ends match the desired string, but are longer.
For example, using the pattern "id=1234&?" prevents a match if id=12345. Or perhaps you might have another name/value called "oldsubaction" for backwards compatibility. Without the leading "&?", then a query of "oldsubaction=showcomments&ID=1234" would match the pattern "subaction=showcomments&ID=1234" unless it was start-anchored.
The regular expressions tutorial cited in our charter should make this clear if I haven't managed to do so.
Jim
oldsubaction=showcomments&id=1234
is not a match neither is
subaction=showcomments&id=12345
I guess I could try it instead of asking :P
I have another question but I will attempt at solving it first before asking questions I think that works best so expect me to come back here in case I failed :P
Thanks Jim once again for your extra effort and great answer
