Mod rewrite not working as expected!

[youngbobby]

Hi,
I'm quite new to this forum and still a noob with mod_rewrite. I've used the code below to try setup friendly url(s) but for some reasons, it doesn't work as expected. Once page loads fully, it still displays "non-friendly" url. Is there anything i am not doing right?

Thanks for reading.

Code Below:

DirectoryIndex index.php
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^categories/([0-9]+)/([0-9]+)/([A-Za-z0-9-]+)/?$ http://example.net/Site/viewCategory.php?page=$1&id=$2&catname=$3 [NC,L]
RewriteRule ^monitor,([A-Za-z0-9-]+)\.php$ http://example.net/Site/track.php?id=$1 [NC,L]
RewriteRule ^Banner,_([^-]+)\.php$ http://example.net/Site/Banner.php?id=$1 [NC,L]
RewriteRule ^Count,_([^-]+)\.php$ http://example.net/Site/Counter.php?id=$1 [NC,L]
RewriteRule ^search,([^-]+)\.php$ http://example.net/Site/search.php?q=$1 [NC,L]
RewriteRule ^view/([0-9]+)/(.*)/?$ http://example.net/Site/viewSiteDetails.php?id=$1&sitename=$2 [NC,L]
#RewriteRule ^view/([0-9]+)/(.*)/?$ http://example.net/Site/viewSiteDetails.php?id=$1 [NC,L]
RewriteRule ^Directory([^-]+)\.php$ http://example.net/Site/Directory.php?page=$1 [NC,L]
RewriteRule ^index/([^-]+)\.php$ http://example.net/Site/index.php?&id=$1 [NC,L]
RewriteRule ^eXit/([^-]+)\.php$ http://example.net/Site/eXit.php?&id=$1 [NC,L]

[jdMorgan]

When you hover over a link on one of your pages, what does it say? -- Is it a 'friendly' URL or not?

If not, that is the problem. This is a two-step process, consisting of changing the links on your pages to be the 'friendly' ones, followed by implementing code like you posted above to 're-connect' the friendly link URLs back to your actual script_filepath_plus_query_strings inside the server.

A third and optional step is to detect direct client requests for non-friendly URLs, and redirect them to the friendly ones. This is not possible using mod_rewrite with URLs like the ones you show above, but can be done by rewriting such requests to a script, which can then use the unfriendly URL to look up the friendly URL in your database and generate a 301 redirect to that friendly URL.

The code above could use some improvement, but let's take care of the major issue first: Have you edited your pages or modified the script that generates those pages to publish 'friendly' URLs, or not? This will be required, unless you want to get/purchase an off-the-shelf plug-in for your CMS to do it for you.

Jim

[youngbobby]

Hey JD

Many thanks for your reply. Like i said earlier, i'm still only a newbie with all this but this seems to be the major issue with my site's functionality. I've done a toplist/traffic manager (self programmed)

Now back to the main issue. With that code on my .htaccess file and uploaded under the Site directory. I linked to the pages (in a friendly way) following the rule i have above. When i hover over the link, the url appears as friendly but when the page is on the verge of displaying it returns the url back to the unfriendly way. I hope you get my point?

Thanks.

[jdMorgan]

Then the major porblem may be that you have coded 302 redirects (because the syntax of your rules includes the protocol and hostname). For example, your first rule

RewriteRule ^categories/([0-9]+)/([0-9]+)/([A-Za-z0-9-]+)/?$ [b]http://example.net[/b]/Site/viewCategory.php?page=$1&id=$2&catname=$3 [NC,L] 

should be

RewriteRule ^categories/([0-9]+)/([0-9]+)/([A-Za-z0-9\-]+)/?$ /Site/viewCategory.php?page=$1&id=$2&catname=$3 [L] 

Jim

[youngbobby]

Hi jD,

it returns a 404 error :(

[g1smd]

You might need to remove /Site/ from the target filepath?

You'll need to make the same alterations to all of your rules which perform an internal rewrite function.

[youngbobby]

Hi,

sorry JD; Page was cached the first time after typo error. Your advice works like magic.

Thanks alot JD I appreciate.

ThumbsUp!

[youngbobby]

Thank you so much g1smd,

You guys have really relieved me alot. I was actually getting frustrated! Now i can smile :)

[g1smd]

Now install Live HTTP Headers for Firefox, and access each type of URL in turn and check the first HTTP response for each and every one is "200 OK".

If any return "302" or "301" then there is still an error in your code.

Please also confirm you removed NC from your rules and now only have [L] in each one.

[jdMorgan]

There's also the issue of that optional trailing slash in some of your rewriterule patterns.

Allowing both "trailing-slash" and "non-trailing-slash" URLs to resolve to the same content creates a duplicate-content issue. You should pick one style of URL or the other. Rewrite only the correct URL to the script, and 301-redirect the incorrect URL to the correct URL.

This prevents having more than one URL return the same page content, effectively making two URLs compete against each other for links and for search ranking.

Jim

[youngbobby]

g1smd, thanks i'm working on that now.

jdMorgan, hey thanks again. Please could you advice on what to edit and maybe what to add?

Thanks.

[g1smd]

^pattern/?$

allows for URL requests for both

example.com/pattern

and

example.com/pattern/

to return the same content.

Change this to

^pattern$

so that only

example.com/pattern

can return content.

Add a preceding rule to redirect only direct client requests for

example.com/pattern/

to

example.com/pattern

to complete the code.

[youngbobby]

forgive me and what preceeding rule should i add when i want to direct client requests for example.com/pattern/ to example.com/pattern ?

[g1smd]

It'll be a 301 redirect from

^pattern/$

to

www.example.com/pattern

here.

Use a

RewriteRule

for this, with

[R=301,L]

flags.

[youngbobby]

Gosh! What a world.

I am trying real hard to implement it wit this code and i keep getting a 404 error. Could you implement it with the code below. Sorry i am becoming more of a pest this days lol.

RewriteRule ^Categories/([0-9]+)/([0-9]+)/([A-Za-z0-9-]+)/?$ /Site/viewCategory.php?page=$1&id=$2&catname=$3 [L]

[jdMorgan]

Spend the time needed to learn what all of this means. Otherwise, you do a disservice to yourself, and risk the welfare of your own site -- How can you know that your code is correct if you don't understand it? Useful resources are cited in our Forum Charter, with examples and tutorials in our Forum Library.

# Externally redirect to remove unwanted trailing slash from "Categories" URL-paths
RewriteRule ^Categories/([0-9]+/[0-9]+/[A-Za-z0-9-]+)/$ http://www.example.com/Categories/$1 [R=301,L]
#
# Internally rewrite Category URL-path requests to "viewCategory" script filepath with query parameters
RewriteRule ^Categories/([0-9]+)/([0-9]+)/([A-Za-z0-9-]+)$ /Site/viewCategory.php?page=$1&id=$2&catname=$3 [L]

Jim

[youngbobby]

Many thanks jD and g1smd. I'm 100% okay now.

Guess it's time to study more on mod_rewrite.

Thanks again :-)

[g1smd]

There's one more thing you might want to add.

After the redirect and before the rewrite, you could add the standard non-www to www canonical redirect code.

It's one more level of ensuring searchengines index your site just right.

[youngbobby]

Okay! I'll add that. Thanks again.