CODEWITHSUNDEEP
apache.htaccesshttp-redirectmod-rewrite
qpidity
qpidity

Reputation: 3

301 redirect for old urls with language parameter

I need a hand with some 301 redirects for my apache htaccess file. The old urls contain variables at the end and have structures like the following:

/furniture-248/category/570-shelves.html?lang=en
/all-products/furniture-248/shelves.html?page=2&lang=en
/store/product/asearch.html?path=7_632&lang=en&Itemid=284

The new urls don't contain parameters of this nature and would be simply of the form:

main-cat/subcat/sale.html

I tried a regular 301 redirect in the htaccess file which works for urls without parameters but those urls containing the ?lang=en simply don't work.

This is what I was trying:

Redirect 301 /furniture-248/category/570-shelves.html?lang=en http://www.domain.com/shelves.html

I'd be very grateful for any help and advice.

Many thanks in advance

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1369

Answers (1)

user2493235
user2493235

Reputation:

You can't use the query string as part of a redirect like that. You have two options.

Option 1

Take the "?lang=en" part off and just redirect all instances of that URL, whatever the query string is.

Redirect 301 /furniture-248/category/570-shelves.html http://www.domain.com/shelves.html

This will leave the query string intact, so the new URL will include "?lang=en" if it is present, or any other query string.

But of course, you might need to only redirect it when it has the "?lang=en" part, or leaving the query string intact when redirecting might not be acceptable. In that case, it will need to be...

Option 2

Use mod_rewrite:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^lang=en$
RewriteRule ^furniture-248/category/570-shelves\.html$ http://www.domain.com/shelves.html? [R=301,L]

This does exactly what you asked for, redirecting /furniture-248/category/570-shelves.html?lang=en to http://www.domain.com/shelves.html and only that.

Note that..

  • The query string is matched separately.

  • The opening forward slash on the matching part is not used (because the fact you're in a website root level .htaccess file implies that opening slash).

  • The closing question mark on the redirect URL is important, as it tells the engine to drop the existing query string, which is what you want.

  • [R=301,L] means do a 301 redirect and don't process any more URL rewriting on this URL.

  • For the matching part in RewriteRule, the dot before "html" is escaped with "\" because dot has a special meaning in a regex.

  • Also for the matching parts, in both RewriteCond and RewriteRule, the ^ means the start of the string and the $ means the end of it, so that we are matching exactly that rather than it being possible for it to be part of a longer string.

And finally, if you're adding a number of these, you only need the "RewriteEngine On" part once, at the top. The other two parts are needed for each one.

Please be sure to test all redirects you add with this method as there is more to mod_rewrite than I have mentioned in this simple explanation.

Upvotes: 0

Related Questions