how to remove folder name from url?

Client removed section name from cms now google links 404

[digiweb]

Joomla site client removed the virtual folder "general" from the urls.

I can't even figure how she did that but it wasn't through htaccess.

Google linked her urls with /general/ in the url. They're 404'ing.

How can I re-write her site's links so that if someone asks for

http://example.com/category/general/something.html

it goes to the correct place which is

http://example.com/category/something.html

I've looked and looked but can't find this exact answer.

Thank you!

[edited by: jdMorgan at 4:53 am (utc) on Feb 18, 2011]
[edit reason] Switched to example,.com to avoid auto-linking [/edit]

[digiweb]

those urls didn't print --

need

site / category / general / page

to be

site / category / page

thank you!

[topr8]

the reason those url's don't print is that you should use

example.com - that's what it is for.

... what have you tried so far?

[digiweb]

thank you so much, my apologies for the delay.

I've tried

1
RewriteRule ^/?general([a-z/.]*)$ /$1 [R=301,L]

2
RewriteCond $1 !^general/
RewriteCond ^/(.*)$ /general/$1 [L]

3
RewriteRule ^general/(.*)$ /$1 [L]


I'm pretty much a newb at htaccess.
2 is a server error
1 and 3 just don't work

[g1smd]

The redirects must be listed before the Joomla internal rewrite code.

The redirects must use RewriteRule syntax with the [R=301,L] flags.

RewriteRule ^(([^/]+/)*)general/([^.]+)\.html http://www.example.com/$1/$3.html [R=301,L]

Immediately after this code, place your canonical non-www to www redirects, again using RewriteRule syntax.

See also: [webmasterworld.com...]

[digiweb]

Fantastic! Thank you so much!