Redirect Domain URL Only

[clickfire]

Is there a way to redirect this

http://www.olddomain.com/

to

http://www.newdomain.com/

without sending other URLs like to

http://www.olddomain.com/blah

to

http://www.newdomain.com/blah

as happens when I try this

Redirect 302 / http://www.domainname.com/

[phranque]

use the RedirectMatch directive instead and be specific with the pattern match:

http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/mod/mod_alias.html#redirectmatch

[g1smd]

See: [webmasterworld.com...]

[phranque]

mod_rewrite would be preferable to mod_alias for several reasons.

[clickfire]

I tested this based on your remarks and seems to work.

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} olddomain\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^$ [newdomain.com$1...] [R=301,L]

Thanks :)

[lucy24]

You forgot

(www\.)?olddomain\.com

and possibly (depending on server's mood, apparently)

^/?$

What's the $1 for? You're only aiming for empty requests-- that is, the index page alone-- so there isn't anything to capture.

[clickfire]

I just used the $1 because it was in the example on the page g1smd referenced. Would you be able to list the lines as they should look in your view and let me test?

[g1smd]

The $1 is always empty/undefined as the RegEx doesn't capture anything (nor should it).

Root URL should end with a trailing slash.

Use example.com in this forum to stop URL auto-linking.

[lucy24]

The www part is for the {HTTP_HOST}. I assumed you're redirecting both www.olddomain.com and olddomain.com. Here the parenthetic (www\.)? means "either with or without the whole www. package".

The ^/?$ replaces your ^? In mod_rewrite, leading slashes aren't supposed to count, but it doesn't hurt to allow for the possibility. Come to think of it, you might even go to

RewriteRule ^/?(index\.html?)?$ et cetera

to grab people who explicitly type "index.html" (or whatever your extension is). This kind of thing apparently depends on your server, and if you're on shared hosting it may be out of your control. I can only say that I've found by direct personal experience that some rules will only work if I put "html" in there.

[clickfire]

Thanks, this seems to work fine.

# redirect domain url only
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} example\.com$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} (www\.)?example\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^/?$ http://www.example.com$1 [R=301,L]

[g1smd]

Completely remove the first condition and the $1 from the target URL of the rule.

[clickfire]

Thanks for catching that. Here's the finished product for posterity's sake.

# redirect domain url only
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} (www\.)?example\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^/?$ http://www.example.com [R=301,L]

[g1smd]

Target URL should end in trailing slash.

The ending $ on the condition stops requests with a port number being redirected.

To be sure of the intent you should show .com and .net for the two URLs. Using .com in both would otherwise lead to an infinite redirect loop.

[catkin]

Is there a good reason to use ^/?$ rather than ^/*$ ? Would the second not also catch [/...] mis-types?

[lucy24]

Today's lesson: there is absolutely no limit to the Forums' built-in auto-linking capacity ;)

Honestly now. Don't people even look at their own posts after submitting? That's when the most egregious typos jump out at you, especially if you don't Preview.

The form /* will not catch typos at the http:// end, because the domain name is not part of the Rule. It will catch typos in the form

www.example.com//

If you have a lot of visitors who hand-type addresses in spite of mobility impairment-- or a lot of unhelpful partners who consistently misspell links-- then sure, you could use the * form. But generally we don't write htaccess to allow for every possible error. Between the browser's "sorry, can't find it, check your typing" message and the custom 404 page, the user should get the idea anyway.