Thread

I have just launched a new EE site and want to have some of the old site addresses re-written to direct to the new ones. I am removing the index.php using the “include” method in the Wiki
The old addresses were in the form:
http://www.esoc.org.uk/?page=home
This is my .htaccess code:

RewriteEngine on

RewriteRule ^\?page=home$ /home/ [L,R=301]
RewriteRule ^\?page=events$ /home/events/ [L,R=301]
RewriteRule ^\?page=permanent$ /home/poc/ [L,R=301]


RewriteCond $1 ^(home|search|member|P[0-9]{2,8}) [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php/$1 [L]

This isn’t working, if I have the Global Template Preferences set to serve a 404, that’s what I get when I load the old address, not a re-written url.

I think it’s got something to do with the leading ? in the old address, any ideas?

You really only need the L on the last rule in your .htaccess file.  The [L] means this is the last rule and to stop processing any further rules.

I think I have found the solution, well it seems to be working anyway. If anyone can spot any errors let me know.

RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} page=(home)
RewriteRule ^/?$ <a href="http://www.esoc.org.uk/%1">http://www.esoc.org.uk/%1</a>? [R=301]

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} page=(events)
RewriteRule ^/?$ <a href="http://www.esoc.org.uk/home/%1">http://www.esoc.org.uk/home/%1</a>? [R=301]

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} page=(permanent)
RewriteRule ^/?$ <a href="http://www.esoc.org.uk/home/poc">http://www.esoc.org.uk/home/poc</a>? [R=301]


RewriteCond $1 ^(home|search|member|P[0-9]{2,8}) [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php/$1 [L]

Not that I’m incredibly good at htaccess, but I sure never have seen anyone using it like that. Good job!

I had read somewhere that you should use the full url for 301 redirects, can anyone confirm if that’s the case?

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} page=(results)
RewriteRule ^/?$ /home/%1? [R=301]

The above works but I’m not sure if Google prefers:

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} page=(results)
RewriteRule ^/?$ <a href="http://www.esoc.org.uk/home/%1">http://www.esoc.org.uk/home/%1</a>? [R=301]

The main thing to be aware of with redirects and rewriting URL’s is that Google only gets one URL for any page. For example… http://www.mysite.com and http://www.mysite.com/index.html are the same page but search engines may look at this as two separate pages and may potentially create a duplicate content issue.

Fortunately search engines are getting smarter at dealing with these common issues like the example above but more uncommon examples may not be treated as kindly.