Forum Moderators: phranque
My problem his: I have a site that was previously hosted at www.domain.com and everything must be redirected to the new domain www.exemple.com.
The new site is managed with a different CMS, and therefore has a completely different url pattern. It's some 600 articles and 15 different sections, so I'm trying to find an easy solution to redirect people at least to the right section, if not the right page on the new website.
I need to do the following redirects (I don't need any internal rewrite):
1) Redirect a couple of specific articles to the exact page on the new domain:
/cms/article.asp?article=01 --> http://www.example.com/section/article/new-title
/cms/article.asp?article=02 --> http://www.example.com/section/article/new-title-2
2) Redirect all the old archive pages to the new ones:
/cms/archive.asp?m=xyz --> http://www.example.com/archive/xyz
3) Redirect every other URL to the new index page
/cms/article.asp?article=whatever --> http://www.example.com/new-index
After two days of trial and error here is my .htaccess file:
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine onRewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/cms/article\.asp$
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^article=01$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/magazine/my-page-01/?
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^articolo=02$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/magazine/my-page-02/? [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/cms/archive\.asp(.*)
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example\.com/cms/archive? [R,NC,L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^(.*)
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example\.com/magazine/new-index? [R,NC,L]
Following all the tips posted before and a couple of tutorial I tried to put the most specific rules first, and the least specific (sort of catch-all rules) at the end, but I cannot get the last rule to work. In I comment it, everything works just fine, otherwise the previous rules are skipped and every page is redirected to the new index. What am I doing wrong? Is it a rule order mistake or I'm just doing it the wrong way? I'm not looking for a quick solution, I'm just trying to understand how it works!
Thanks to everyone who will answer this post.
--edit -- if I don't comment the last two lines, specific articles rules are skipped, but the archive redirect works
[edited by: jdMorgan at 5:29 pm (utc) on Jan. 23, 2009]
[edit reason] exAmple.com [/edit]
So, that ends the current request, the server forgets all about it, and it is up to the client to take the new URL from the server's redirect response and ask for the content again.
So, when this new HTTP request comes in, if you redirect *all* URL requests (as you last rule does), then of course this new request will be redirected as well.
Let's fix this, and clean up the code a bit, too:
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
#
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^article=01$
RewriteRule ^cms/article\.asp$ http://www.example.com/magazine/my-page-01/? [R=301,L]
#
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^articolo=02$
RewriteRule .* http://www.example.com/magazine/my-page-02/? [R=301,L]
#
RewriteRule ^cms/archive\.asp$ http://www.example.com/cms/archive? [NC,R=301,L]
#
RewriteCond $1 !^magazine/new-index$
RewriteCond $1 !^robots\.txt$
RewriteCond $1 !^sitemap\.xml$
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.example.com/magazine/new-index? [R=301,L]
Jim
I tried the solution you suggested, but unfortunately it still ignores the first 3 RewriteRule and only seems to accept the final one. Now even the "cms/archive" redirect doesn't work. Every URL simply redirects to the the new index page.
I tried again and apparently I need to add the following conditional if I want the archive RewriteRule to work properly:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/cms/archive\.asp(.*)
Probably I'm just tired and I cannot see some self-evident mistake, but the 2 first conditional still don't work...
Thanks also for the tips about which files I should/shouldn't include. As soon as I fix the redirect issue I'll focus on the rest. The problem is that I "inherited" this website, and the old one has been completely deleted from the old server (not my fault) without any notice and I had to put online the new site without enough time to plan this sort of things. However now users who follow old links or bookmarks can only see the new site. I don't mind serving them a new single custom page where they can find the explanation, but I would like to learn how to handle this kind of situation in the future.
The most important part is redirects first, rewrites last.
.
For your last question, what prevents it looping? You do need [L] on the end of the rule here.
I had to make some minor changes to the condition and rewrite rules for the single articles, but the final 3 lines suggested by jim and the final [L]s added at the en of the rules fixed the problem. No more looping and now my htaccess works like a charm.
Thanks again :-)
If you mean you did this:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/cms/archive\.asp(.*)
RewriteRule ^cms/archive\.asp$ http://www.example.com/cms/archive? [NC,R=301,L]
Jim
