What to change in the examples below?
The examples below can be entered into your .htaccess file exactly as shown. Just make sure to adjust the actual path to the file so the .htaccess file knows where it's located. Also, if you see the domain 'example.com', change this to your own domain name.
Redirecting a URL
Using Redirect in an .htaccess file enables you to redirect users from an old page to a new page without having to keep the old page. For example, if you use index.html as your index file and then later rename index.html to home.html, you could set up a redirect to send users from index.html to home.html. For example:
Redirect to a local site file
Redirect /path/to/old/file/old.html /path/to/new/file/new.html
Redirect to an external site file
Redirect /path/to/old/file/old.html http://www.example.com/new/file/new.html
The first path
The first path to the old file must be a local UNIX path, NOT the full path. So, if the .htaccess file is in the directory /example.com, you would not include /home/exampleuser/example.com in the local UNIX path. The first / represents the example.com directory. If the old file was in that directory, you would follow the / with the old file name.
The second path
The second path to the new file can be a local UNIX path, but can also be a full URL to link to a page on a different server or the same server.
Examples of redirects
Redirect from an index.html file to a different directory
Redirect /index.html /new/
Redirect from index.html to default.html
Redirect /index.html /default.html
Redirect a local /private directory to another site's private directory
Redirect /private/ http://www.example.com/private/
Load a .gif file from a different site
Make sure the other site is something you own. You should never hotlink files from other websites.
Redirect /img/logo.gif http://www.example.com/images/logo.gif
Using Regular Expressions
If you want to use a Regular Expression to redirect something, use the RedirectMatch directive:
RedirectMatch "^/oldfile\.html/?$" "http://example.com/newfile.php"
Redirecting error messages
You can also redirect 404 errors. Instead of throwing a 404 page, this redirects to the homepage of the website.
ErrorDocument 404 http://example.com/
Redirect non-existing pages to index.php
If a visitor attempts to access a page that doesn't exist, they are presented with a 404 error. You can instead redirect any request to a non-existing page to your index.php file (or any index file) by adding the following code in your .htaccess:
Options +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
If your index page isn't index.php, just change the last line to your actual index file. Then the visitor is redirected back to your home page.
Automatically loading a subdirectory
This example redirects the ROOT domain's URL to any subdirectory. In this example, it automatically loads example.com/subdir1:
RewriteEngine on RewriteRule ^$ /subdir1/ [L]
Forcing www in the URL
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]
Removing www in the URL
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.example.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://example.com/$1 [R=301,L]
Rewriting a URL
This example rewrites a URL to another URL. This rewrites example.com/1.html to example.com/abc.php?id=1
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^([0-9]+).html /abc.php?id=$1 [QSA,L]
The following explains the rules above:
- ([0-9]+)
- allows any digit, and only any digit, 1 or more times.
- ([a-z-]*)
- allows any lowercase letter, plus “-” for word separation, 0 or more times. If you want it to support uppercase too, use “([a-zA-Z-]*). For example:
- RewriteRule ^place/([a-zA-Z-]*).html /place/abc.php?id=$1 [QSA,L]
- [QSA,L]
- appends this to your internal scripting query string, and makes it the Last rewrite rule executed.
After using this method, you can retrieve the webpage with either address type. This is handy for retro-fitting a website that was not designed with mod_rewrite in mind. This is good because it does not destroy any bookmarks saved on users computers.
View the following link for more information and examples about mod-rewrite:
- mod-rewrite cheat sheet
Rewriting non-existing links to index.php
The following redirects all links to files or folders that do not exist to index.php. However, if the file or directory does exist, it loads normally:
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
