Need help replacing part of URL

Using htaccess to insert extra directory names

[dpinion]

Greetings all,

I have been searching through the forums for about an hour and just can't seem to get what I want to work, although this seems like it should be simple enough. Here is what I have:


Current URL:
www.example.com/products/cat1/cat2/product

New URL:
www.example.com/products/NEWCAT/cat1/cat2/product

So we are consolidating a few things on our menu and tucking them into another category.

So I need to be able to redirect any users that try to use the current URL over to the new url by adding in NEWCAT to the URL.

I currently have this in my htaccess, which isn't working:


RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^test\.example\.com$
RewriteRule ^products/cat1/(.*)$ /products/NEWCAT/cat1$1 [R=301,L]

Hope this makes sense, and thanks for any help.

[lucy24]

Throw out the HTTP_HOST line. You don't need it. In fact, one job of your Redirect is to get everyone on the same page. Give the complete protocol and domain name, as in:

RewriteRule ^products/cat1/(.*)$ http://www.example.com/products/NEWCAT/cat1$1 [R=301,L]

As I typed out this line, a simple error jumped up and hit me in the face. I hope it's the same one you were running into. Hint: Move one parenthesis. In your rule as written, there are at least three equally valid solutions.

[dpinion]

Hey Lucy,
Thank you for your help! I admit I am still pretty new to this stuff, but trying to read over everything I can to learn. I modified mine slightly from what you have (I assume this is what you meant by your hint):

RewriteRule ^products/backplanes(.*)$ http://www.example.com/products/single-board-computers/backplanes$1 [R=301,L]

[lucy24]

Yup. Slash on both sides, otherwise you're redirecting to "backplanesblahblah" which probably does not exist. Or, if you had made the opposite mistake, "backplanes//blahblah".

[dpinion]

Thanks again for the help! I will get the hang of this one day :)

[g1smd]

Wait. Hold it right there and then back up one.

URLs for product pages do not need to specify any of the category names as folders.

Sure, list your products in categories and have a heirarchy of categories, but don't specify category names in the actual product URLs.

The benefits of this will be blindingly obvious once you try to implement any sort of multi-faceted navigation system.