.htaccess Meltdown

Looking at You With Sad Puppy Eyes

[SevenCubed]

Hi folks,

I know the philosophy of this forum quite well. I know it's not intended to be a .htaccess writing service.

However, I've been having one technical meltdown after another for weeks now and I'm feeling empty and numb.

If I have to be put through the "lecture ringer" I'm sure I can bare with it but please do be gentle...<looking at you with sad puppy eyes>.

It's simple enough but not working. I am used to working directly in apache config files (httpd.conf, vhosts.conf) but this one is related to .htaccess so it might be a dot or slash in wrong place or not there when it should be or there when it shouldn't. I dunno anymore.

I just need to redirect a Wordpress page that's linked as:

www.example.com/?page_id=200 (which is actually named "actual-page-name-old" in Wordpress panel but pointed to "http://www.example.com/?page_id=200" on most public links).
to
www.example.com/actual-page-name/

This is further complicate (for me) because of a total lack of experience with Wordpress. From what I've been able to understand wordpress doesn't actually haves "page" but rather "stubs" that are created to return a virtual page that is identified and pointed to be the "?page_id=200"?

I've tried many variations throughout the day and nothing is working :(

Edit: sorry didn't mean to drop the link reference in one of the URL's to actual site, caught it after posting, changed to example.com

[SevenCubed]

I guess I should at least have added some examples I've tried:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^?page_id=200$1 http://www.example.com/page-name/$1 [R=301,L] <-- this one produced real nasty results
RewriteRule ^/page-name-old/$1 http://www.example.com/page-name/$1 [R=301,L]
RewriteRule http://www.example.com/page-name-old/$1 http://www.example.com/page-name/$1 [R=301,L]
RewriteRule http://www.example.com/?page_id=200 http://www.example.com/page-name/$1 [R=301,L]

And, no, I didn't have them all in at the same time, tried them one after another.

I inherited this site from a previous developer/maintainer and was very reluctant about it because the internal page structure is messy plus me not being familiar with Wordpress. When I met with these people I certainly expressed those concerns and offered to revamp it into a better streamlined non-Wordpress version but they didn't want to. I only took it on because it's the husband's company of one of my existing clients that referred them to me. Not that this has anything to do with my actual OP problem, it's just background fluff to help you understand how I've arrived at this predicament.

[aakk9999]

I am not an expert at all, but perhaps you can try the following:

RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /\?page_id=200\ HTTP/
RewriteRule ^$ http://www.example.com/actual-page-name/? [R=301,L]

I think you need to put this in your .htaccess before the Wordpress section where all requests are passed onto index.php

My understanding (and I stand to be corrected) is that on the left hand side of RewriteRule you cannot have query string. So you first put RewriteCond to capture this particular request, i.e. so that the rule is only executed if the request is /?page_id=200

Then the left side of RewriteRule which should be the pattern after the domain name but without the query string ends up being empty, hence ^$
The right side is the fully qualified target URL including protocol and domain name and the ? at the end of it strips off the query string.

[SevenCubed]

EUREKA ACES !

Oh my gosh aakk9999 you are a life saver here. It worked!

I am seriously grateful for your reply. It worked as you posted it. I just added [NC] at the end of the first line just in case.

I still have another dilemma that's related and tied in with my OP too but with this foundation you've provided I'll be able to find my way out of the darkness from here.

Also congrats (condolences? (kidding)) on your promotion to moderator. I saw a thread concerning that the other day but was so buried in situations here that I didn't even take time to login to say so.

[phranque]

RewriteRule http://www.example.com/?page_id=200 http://www.example.com/page-name/$1 [R=301,L]

http://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/mod/mod_rewrite.html#rewriterule

On the first RewriteRule, (the Pattern) is matched against the (%-decoded) URL-path (or file-path, depending on the context) of the request. Subsequent patterns are matched against the output of the last matching RewriteRule.

this means you will never match your pattern with the hostname or the query string.
if you have that requirement you can use a RewriteCond directive and match against the HTTP_HOST or QUERY_STRING server variables.

RewriteRule ^/page-name-old/$1 http://www.example.com/page-name/$1 [R=301,L]

your use of the $1 in the Pattern is incorrect syntax.
the $1 is intended to be used as a back-reference variable in the Substitution string.
assuming your intention was to end-anchor the Pattern, that's just a dollar sign ($) without the digit.

[lucy24]

Well, who could be unkind to sad puppy-dog eyes? :)

I just added [NC] at the end of the first line just in case.

The [NC] flag is fine for redirects. But make sure you don't use it in rewrites, unless you're rewriting to a php-type page that will make its own decisions about correct casing.

WordPress seems to be based on a lot of stuff happening magically behind the scenes, so it can be used by people who know absolutely nothing. This is fine up until the moment you need to do something non-standard.

[phranque]

RewriteRule ^/page-name-old/$1 http://www.example.com/page-name/$1 [R=301,L]

i forgot to mention one thing.

http://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/mod/mod_rewrite.html#rewriterule

- When using the rewrite engine in .htaccess files the per-directory prefix (which always is the same for a specific directory) is automatically removed for the RewriteRule pattern matching and automatically added after any relative (not starting with a slash or protocol name) substitution encounters the end of a rule set. See the RewriteBase directive for more information regarding what prefix will be added back to relative substitutions.
- ...
- The removed prefix always ends with a slash, meaning the matching occurs against a string which never has a leading slash. Therefore, a Pattern with ^/ never matches in per-directory context.

if you were implementing this RewriteRule in the server config context it would be appropriate to match against the leading slash.

[not2easy]

WordPress seems to be based on a lot of stuff happening magically behind the scenes, so it can be used by people who know absolutely nothing. This is fine up until the moment you need to do something non-standard.

Very true. Unless there is some setting that prevents it (either in the general settings or the selected permalink structure or some plugin), you can usually just click to edit a page or post, then edit the title you want to change in WP and it automatically rewrites to the new name. I caught a horribly mangled spelling of a word used in a page's title (and so its URL) and just changing the spelling created the new URL and rewrote requests to the new name.

_{(edited to fix punctuation)}

[g1smd]

RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /\?page_id=200\ HTTP/
RewriteRule ^$ http://www.example.com/actual-page-name/? [R=301,L]

I would make two small changes to ak9999 code:

RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /(index\.php)?\?page_id=200\ HTTP/
RewriteRule ^(index\.php)?$ http://www.example.com/actual-page-name/? [R=301,L]

This allows requests for example.com/?page_id=200 and for example.com/index.php?page_id=200 to be redirected.

Be aware of another limitation. If there are additional parameters requested, the request will not be redirected.

Make sure this redirect is placed before your site-wide non-www to www redirect. This avoids an unwanted redirection chain for non-www requests.

[aakk9999]

Thanks on improving my basics!

I looked it up and (index\.php)? means "or optionally if also exists index.php in the matching partern"

Be aware of another limitation. If there are additional parameters requested, the request will not be redirected.

Would adding an additional RewriteCond work for an additional parameter in URL? E.g.

RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /(index\.php)?\?page_id=200\ HTTP/ [OR] 
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /(index\.php)?\?page_id=200&  
RewriteRule ^(index\.php)?$ http://www.example.com/actual-page-name/? [R=301,L]

Of course, only if the additional parameter does not change the page content and is either a presentational or a tracking parameter.

[Panthro]

So you guys are the ones hacking all the WP sites!





lol

[lucy24]

Would adding an additional RewriteCond work for an additional parameter in URL?

RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /(index\.php)?\?page_id=200\ HTTP/ [OR]
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /(index\.php)?\?page_id=200& 

You could collapse them into a single Condition:

RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /(index\.php)?\?page_id=200(?:&\S+)?\ HTTP/ 

If your server is cranky about \S, replace with [^\ ]. (In htaccess, literal spaces have to be escaped-- even inside grouping brackets-- because they have syntactic meaning. In ordinary PCRE they don't.)

[g1smd]

So you guys are the ones hacking all the WP sites!

After lengthy discussion among a number of people here, I eventually took a set of suggested htaccess optimisations over to Wordpress but they weren't interested.

[lucy24]

How odd. Admittedly I've only once had an extended interaction with someone at WP-- but they certainly seemed to have working brain cells! :(

g1, the trick is to go to the last page of your StickyMail inbox, Select All ... and delete that sucker without looking. It's the only thing I've found to work.

[aakk9999]

You could collapse them into a single Condition:

RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /(index\.php)?\?page_id=200(?:&\S+)?\ HTTP/

Thanks Lucy, learning something new every day :)

[SevenCubed]

Many thanks to all of you here for your help.

@aakk9999 for the solution, @g1smd for the fine tuning suggestions -- I implemented them, @phranque for educational encouragement (I'll get around to it someday, really I will!), @not2easy for confirming gremlins in the details of WP, @Panthro for injecting some humour when I needed it most, and @lucy24 -- just because -- how could we live without you?!