htaccess 301 redirect with an exception

getting subdirectories to redirect sometimes but not always

[robcubbon]

Hi, my .htaccess skills have always left a lot to be desired...

I have a site where example.com/somepath needs to redirect to domain.com

But there are a couple of pages that are example.com/somepath/something.html that needs to stay as it is

I tried :

Redirect 301 /somepath http://example.com 

which fixed the home page issue but took out the subdirectory of the example.com/somepath/something.html pages which made them 404s!

If anyone has a fix for this I'd be much obliged. I've searched Google for an answer.

[edited by: robcubbon at 10:39 pm (utc) on Feb 5, 2014]

[phranque]

welcome to WebmasterWorld, robcubbon!


Redirect is a mod_alias directive.
you need to use mod_rewrite directives for this.
look at using a RewriteRule preceded by a RewriteCond to exclude the exceptions from the rule.

also, please read this:
IMPORTANT: Please Use Example.com For Domain Names in Posts [webmasterworld.com]

[lucy24]

you need to use mod_rewrite directives for this.

... and this, in turn, means that you need to convert all your existing mod_alias directives (Redirect by that name) into mod_rewrite format. It generally isn't safe to mix modules.

But wait! If you've got a finite number of pages to redirect-- that is, "redirect A, B, C and D" rather than "redirect everything except E" --you may still be able to use mod_alias. You'll just need to change from Redirect alone, using straight text, to RedirectMatch using a Regular Expression.

[robcubbon]

Thank you for the welcome, Phranque, I'm sure I've been here before but, apparently, not with this username and email address. I have corrected my post to go along with the guidelines however I was unable to find the solution by googling "RewriteRule preceded by a RewriteCond"

Yes, there are a very small finite number of pages to redirect, lucy24, (4, I think) however, I'm a bit unclear on what all these terms mean.

Thank you both for your input.

[lucy24]

Staying with mod_alias:

Redirect 301 /blahblah http://www.example.com/newpath/

A rule in this form will take any request beginning in /blahblah and send it over to /newpath instead, reappending the rest of the request:

http://www.example.com/blahblah/
>>
http://www.example.com/newpath/

http://www.example.com/blahblah/filename.html
>>
http://www.example.com/newpath/filename.html

http://www.example.com/blahblah/otherfile.php
>>
http://www.example.com/newpath/otherfile.php

And so on for all requests. RedirectMatch on the other hand uses Regular Expressions and captures:

RedirectMatch 301 blahblah/(one|two|three|four)\.html http://www.example.com/newpath/$1.html

(But don't quote me; I haven't used mod_alias in a couple of years.) Of course you could also write four individual rules:

Redirect 301 blahblah/one.html http://www.example.com/newpath/one.html

and repeat. When it's a grand total of four items, it really is your call.

[robcubbon]

Thank you for your help Lucy.

I'm sorry I'm so thick but it seems that redirect 301 and redirectmatch 301 do the same thing. They apply the rules globally. I just want a rule that applies to 2 URLs and none others. How do you do that?

[edited by: robcubbon at 11:24 am (utc) on Feb 6, 2014]

[robcubbon]

It's OK. I've used a WordPress plug-in, thank you :)