301 redirect URLs containing special characters

[george2013]

We recently created a new website with another provider. The old website has been deleted and a .htaccess 301 redirect created. 90% of them work fine, but noticed that that for the following redirect I get '500 Internal Server Error'.

Redirect 301 /category.php?id=12&cat=s http://example.com/

The issue probably is the ? and the & symbol, but I am not sure how and what to add to the rewrite code.

Any suggestions are welcome.

Regards,
George

[lucy24]

mod_alias (Redirect by that name) only works on paths. If you need to redirect a specific query string you'll need to use mod_rewrite (RewriteRule with flag [R=301,L]).

Ordinarily this would mean you have to shift everything else to mod_rewrite as well-- but since it's a sitewide redirect you can probably fake it by just making sure the rule is in the appropriate place.

But a more general question: This specific URL is getting redirected to the root. Suppressing side discussion about advisability or otherwise of doing this in any case. I have to assume that at the end of all your page-specific redirects you have a global mop-up in the form (don't quote me, I'm improvising)

RedirectMatch 301 /.* http://example.com/

where you're not actually capturing anything, just using RedirectMatch to override the ordinary reappend-the-path behavior of mod_alias. So anything that hasn't already been redirected gets sent along to the front page of the new site.

Why don't you simply let /category.php?id=12&cat=s get picked up by this final redirect? Do requests for /category.php with some other parameter get sent somewhere else?

[george2013]

Hi Lucy,

Thank you for your post.

The

RedirectMatch 301 /.* http://example.com/

almost did the trick. I should have copied all the rules in the first place, here they are:

Options +FollowSymLinks 

RewriteEngine On 
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.example\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [L,R=301]
RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME} !-f 
RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME} !-d 
RewriteRule ^([^/]+)/?$ /product.php?id=$1 [QSA,L]
ErrorDocument 404 error404.html

RedirectMatch 301 /dir/(.*) http://example.com/dir/old/$1

I haven't used htaccess in the past, so apologies if any if this is confusing.

The

RedirectMatch 301 /.* http://example.com/

worked, but it also redirected following URL - which work fine without this line -

Redirect 301 /PRODUCT http://example.com/accessories.html

Thanks,
G

[lucy24]

Any mopping-up line should come at the very end of all rules. This part is true of any redirects anywhere: put the specific rules before the general ones. Within any given module, rules will execute in the order you put them.

So for example if you wanted to take
/category.php?id=12&cat=s
and send it to its own place:

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} (^|&)id=12(&|$)
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} (^|&)cat=s(&|$)
RewriteRule ^category\.php http://www.example.com/new-wonderful-special-page.html? [R=301,L]

(the trailing ? is to make the query string go away, assuming that's what you want)
and then everything with a different query falls down to

RewriteRule ^category\.php http://www.example.com/not-so-special-page-for-the-others [R=301,L]

and then everything for all other pages ends up at

RewriteRule .* http://www.example.com/leftover-page-for-the-bottom-of-the-heap.html

With mod_alias:

Redirect301 /product http://example.com/accessories.html

et cetera for any specific pages or directories that need individual handling, winding up with

RedirectMatch 301 /.* http://www.example.com/bottom-of-the-barrel.html


Rules beginning in
RedirectMatch /.*
should pick up requests for absolutely everything on the domain.

But if you really are mixing mod_alias (Redirect by that name) and mod_rewrite, be careful about the order. mod_rewrite will almost certainly execute before mod_alias, regardless of which one is physically first in htaccess. So put the RewriteRules first as a reminder to yourself that all of them will happen first.

Have only one mopping-up rule. If you're combining mods, the mopup will have to go on the mod_alias side. If you express it as a RewriteRule, anything using mod_alias (Redirect or RedirectMatch) will never get a chance to run.