Page Renaming and 301

Trying to automate the 301 code

[Landyman]

Hi, this topic has probably been posted before, but scouring through the forums, I couldn't find exactly what I want to do.
What I have is a bunch of pages that are in this format:
Second_First.html
and I want to name them:
First-Second.html

Since these pages have rankings, I need to do a 301 redirect to keep them that way. Is there a good automated way to do this redirection? Or am I going to have to do "RedirectPermanent /Second_First.html [domainname.com...] for all of the pages I have. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thank You!

[Birdman]

You can do this with mod_alias or mod_rewrite. These examples should redirect(301) all files in the root folder that have the underscore present.

Be sure to have your backup .htaccess handy as I've been known to give an incorrect example ;)

mod_alias
RedirectMatch 301 ^(.*)_(.*)\.html$ ht*p://www.yoursite.com/$2-$1.html

mod_rewrite
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^(.*)_(.*)\.html$ /$2-$1.html [R=301,L]

[Landyman]

Ok. Thanks! Does this also work for directories?
Like if I have /Directory/Second_First.html and want to make it /Directory/First-Second.html.. can I do this?

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^(.*)/(.*)_(.*)\.html$ $1/$3-$2.html [R=301,L]

Thanks for the help so far!

[Landyman]

Thanks!
I went with the mod_alias that you gave me.
The syntax I used is:
RedirectMatch 301 ^/(.*)/(.*)_(.*)\.html$ [domainname.com...]
And this kept the directories and everything too.
Works like a charm.
Thanks for your help!

[Birdman]

Yes, that should work just fine.

[Birdman]

Ah, see I told you I give incorrect examples ;) I forgot that mod_alias starts with the slash at the beginning of the filepath, whereas mod_rewrite does not.

But, I think you are going to need two lines because your example should only redirect URLs in the second level directories. You will still need one for the files in the root directory.

RedirectMatch 301 ^/(.*)_(.*)\.html$ h*tp://www.domainname.com/$1/$3-$2.html
RedirectMatch 301 ^/(.*)/(.*)_(.*)\.html$ h*tp://www.domainname.com/$1/$3-$2.html

[Landyman]

Yep. Got it. Thanks for all your help!