Kindly assist writing an htaccess rule!

[born2run]

Hi,

I have some urls which are now 404 due to site upgrade.

I want all urls starting with http://www.example.com/archives/* to point to http://www.example.com/news

(notice that after archives there is a wildcard char)

Can someone here please help me with the code for htaccess rules? Thanks a lot in advance!

Regards,
Kip

[phranque]

ideally you want to redirect urls on a one-to-one basis to equivalent content.

what have you tried so far?

[born2run]

I tried some code yesterday but it didn't work and now I don't remember (sorry!).

Can you assist? Thanks!

[lucy24]

it didn't work and now I don't remember

Well, then you can simply start from scratch. This time show us what you try, and make sure you say exactly what happens. "Didn't work" can mean a lot of different things.

Do you currently have any rules using mod_rewrite? (If you're using a CMS, the answer is yes.) If so, express your redirects as RewriteRule. Otherwise you can use mod_alias (Redirect by that name); this is the kind of redirect that it was made for.

[born2run]

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example.com\archives$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.example.com\archives$
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com [R=301,L]

Kindly assist.

[lucy24]

Ouch. You're doing this on purpose, aren't you? :)

#1 HTTP_HOST is only the part before the first slash. So it's example.com, or www.example.com, or possibly www.example.com:8080.

#2 Do you have more than one site (including subdomains) passing through the same htaccess file? If no, you don't need to say anything about the host at all. It will all get regularized in the target of the rule.

#3 In mod_rewrite (and anything else using Regular Expressions), a backslash is the escape character. Directory slashes / look the same as they do in your browser. Possibly you use windows in real life?

#4 No point in capturing if you're not going to reuse the captured material. Here you do need to reuse the captured part-- but only the part after /archives/. This is a key difference between mod_rewrite and mod_alias: nothing gets reappended by default. Yes, OK, the query string does. But that's not at issue here.

#5 Where is this rule located? Ordinarily you'd want it in the root. (Invoking mod_rewrite more than once along the same path is generally not a good idea. Do as I say, not as I do.) That means the pattern will start

^archives/

while the target will start

http://www.example.com/news/

[rag_gupta]

I've checked it also, it is working. Today again I've checked it's working.

I've placed this rewrite directive on <snip>

Try entering this url in browser:

<snip>

Here is the another code:

 RewriteEngine On
 RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.example.com/archives [NC]
 RewriteRule ^archives/(.*) http://example.com/news [R=301,L]

[edited by: incrediBILL at 5:20 am (utc) on Jan 27, 2014]
[edit reason] URls removed. Please see forum charter and TOS [/edit]

[born2run]

Hi Rag, it didn't work (the htaccess code). It still redirects the page to 404.

[rag_gupta]

You need to paste your .htaccess so that we can have a look.

Also try moving this code in the very top or to bottom and see if it works

[lucy24]

RewriteRule ^archives/(.*) http://example.com/news [R=301,L]

You need to reuse the captured part of the path. Otherwise everyone's just getting redirected to example.com/news and that's all.

[born2run]

Dear Lucy, could you please assist and give me a correct version of the code? :-)

I'm not a programmer or avid Apache user.

Regards,
Kip

[rag_gupta]

He himself does not know what he wants. I'm unsubscribing ..

[lucy24]

He knows what he wants, he just hasn't spent nine years making ebooks, leading to relative fluency in Regular Expressions. (I am not kidding when I say I don't speak a word of Apache. Here you don't need it.)

exhibit A:

RewriteRule ^archives/(.*) http://example.com/news [R=301,L] 

exhibit B:

RewriteRule ^archives/(.*) http://example.com/news/$1 [R=301,L] 

See the difference? Try each one in your browser and you will see it in your address bar.

[born2run]

Hi, the other stuff remains the same? that is,


RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example.com\archives$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.example.com\archives$

Thanks a lot!

[not2easy]

You should have a separate rule in place that takes care of redirection either www. or non www. version to the other. That should not be part of this redirect.

[lucy24]

the other stuff remains the same? that is,

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example.com\archives$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.example.com\archives$

Oh my ###. I thought we'd got rid of the HTTP_HOST business ages ago. The host is never example.com/anything-here, so the conditions will always fail and the rule will never execute. See msg4640259 halfway up this thread.

:: pause as I now understand why the same person* seems to be posting twice ::


* [a-z]{3,4}2[a-z]{3,4}

[System]

The following message was cut out to new thread by incredibill. New thread at: apache/4641806.htm [webmasterworld.com]
3:49 pm on Feb 1, 2014 (PST -8)