Redirecting all content in one directory to a single page

Almost got it, but having problems with the dynamic content.

[Magle]

Hi,

I'm trying to redirect all the obsolete URLs from my old forum to the the new forum main page (it's impossible for me to redirect all threads to the new equivalent, instead I have to do individual threads manually).

So far it's working well for everything except URLs that included dynamic content.

This is an excerpt of my apache config file:

 RewriteRule ^ubbthreads/showthreaded.php/Cat/0/Number/51 http://www.example.dk/music-forums/23-bach-toccata-fugue-d.html [R=301,L]
 RewriteRule ^ubbthreads/showflat(.+)$ http://www.example.dk/music-forums/ [R=301,L]
 RewriteRule ^ubbthreads/showthreaded(.+)$ http://www.example.dk/music-forums/ [R=301,L]
 RewriteRule ^ubbthreads/grabnext(.+)$ http://www.example.dk/music-forums/ [R=301,L]
 RewriteRule ^ubbthreads/printthread(.+)$ http://www.example.dk/music-forums/ [R=301,L]
 RewriteRule ^ubbthreads/showprofile(.+)$ http://www.example.dk/music-forums/ [R=301,L]
 RewriteRule ^ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php http://www.example.dk/music-forums/ [R=301,L]

It works fine for URLs like this:

www.example.dk/ubbthreads/showflat.php/Cat/0/Number/520/an/0/page/0

But URLs with? dynamic content like this:

www.example.dk/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=10454&page=0&fpart=1&vc=1

Will be directed to

www.example.dk/music-forums/?Cat=0&Number=10454&page=0&fpart=1&vc=1

which actually works. However, I'm afraid since it's a matter of thousands of pages redirecting that way, the search engines might see it as a massive case of duplicate content. (thousands of URLs with different dynamic URLs but exactly the same content (the new forum main page)).

I'd appreciate very much any help on how to make the dynamic content redirect to the genuine main page of new forum as well, thanks in advance.

[edited by: jdMorgan at 2:13 pm (utc) on Mar. 16, 2007]
[edit reason] Example.com, please see TOS. [/edit]

[jdMorgan]

Two things you need to know:

1) RewriteRule cannot "see" the query string, it sees only the local URL-path, and not any query data which may be appended to the URL. If you you wish to test or back-reference part of a query string, you must use a separate RewriteCond and examine the server variable %{QUERY_STRING}. However, since you intend to discard the query data, this does not directly apply in this case, except as it may influence what you should seek to match with your RewriteRule patterns.

2) To clear the current query string, append a question mark to your substitution URL.

So taking your last rule as an example, you simply need to add the question mark:

 RewriteRule ^ubbthreads/ubbthreads\.php$ http://www.example.dk/music-forum[b]s/?[/b] [R=301,L]

Note as well that the period in ubbthreads.php has been escaped, and that the URL is now end-anchored with a "$" as it should be.

For more information, see the documents cited in our forum charter [webmasterworld.com] and the tutorials in the Apache forum section of the WebmasterWorld library [webmasterworld.com].

Jim

[Magle]

Thank you so much for the help! That did the trick, it now works perfectly.

Btw, Sorry for not reading the charter thoroughly before posting. I put the links inside code in order to avoid them being live (which strangely did not seem to work since they were still parsed), but I see I should have disguised the domain as well.