.htaccess rewrite help requested

[Cheepnis]

I have my store at www.mysite.com/store/catalog/index.php

Everything in the store works great. I have www.mysite.com/index.html that does a meta redirect to www.mysite.com/store/catalog/index.php for people arriving at the root. It works, but...

It's slow and I understand SEO would prefer a 301 redirect, so I'm editing my .htaccess file.

 

Up to this point, I have only had used rewrite to add "www" to anybody coming in without it:

 

RewriteEngine on 
# RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mysite\.com [NC] 
# ReWriteRule ^(.*)$  http://www.mysite.com/$1  [R=301,L]

However, I would like to also have anybody arriving to www.mysite.com to be 301 redirected immediately to www.mysite.com/store/catalog/index.php

I then tried to add the following below it, but it breaks my site:

 

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.mysite\.com [NC] 
RewriteRule * http://www.mysite.com/store/catalog/index.php [R=301,L] 

Any help here would be most appreciated!

[MrPhil]

Your code 1) has an invalid RewriteRule pattern, and 2) sends all visitors (including old saved links) to the main entry.

 

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/store/catalog [NC] 
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /store/catalog/$1 [R=301,L] 

This assumes that your store (say, the main index.php) is in /store/catalog. Any URL coming in without /store/catalog leading off the URI will get /store/catalog added to it. As you're doing a 301 redirect (tell everyone that they should remember the new address) and aren't hiding the fact that you're redirecting, you might as well leave your configure.php files showing "/store/catalog" rather than "/". The store will work either way, but it's silly to send a bad URL (in an internal link) to your customer's browser, have the browser send in the bad URL, have your server bounce back the good URL, have the browser resubmit with the good URL, and then serve up the page. Just send out the correct URL in the first place by having correct configure.php files.

[Cheepnis]

Thanks for your help Phil, but when I use your suggestions (and commenting out the prior rewrites that add the "www") it returns with a browser (FF) error that redirection cannot happen. Here's what I currently have, but if I remove the META redirect in the root index.html (by removing the index.html file), the store works fine when going to mysite.com, but returns a 403 for going to www.mysite.com.

 

RewriteEngine on 
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mysite.com [NC] 
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www.)?mysite.com [NC] 
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.mysite.com/store/catalog/$1 [L,R=301] 

 

It seems like what I'm looking for should be simple enough. What I want is for it to say "when somebody goes to either mysite.com or www.mysite.com, send them permanently to www.mysite.com/store/catalog instead" in such a way that not having an index.html in the root doesn't matter.

[Jack_mcs]

However, I would like to also have anybody arriving to www.mysite.com to be 301 redirected immediately to www.mysite.com/store/catalog/index.php

It's a mistake having it redirect to index.php. In fact, the code should be added to remove that from the urls. See here for the changes you should make.

[MrPhil]

Your .htaccess file says "if the domain is mysite.com AND (the domain is mysite.com OR it is www.mysite.com), redirect all visitors to http://www.mysite.com/store/catalog/index.php". That will work for mysite.com, but www.mysite.com won't match the conditional and doesn't get redirected (and with no index.html, you get a 403).

 

For better indexing, I would keep the non-www -> www rewrite. Depending on your host's exact configuration, you may or may not be allowed to do the following:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond  %{HTTP_HOST}  ^mysite\.com  
RewriteRule  ^(.*)$  http://www.mysite.com/$1  [R=301,L]

RewriteCond  %{REQUEST_URI}  !^/store/catalog  [NC]
RewriteRule  ^(.*)$  /store/catalog/$1  [R=301,L]

The first part makes any URL consistent with the www.mysite.com domain (better SE indexing that way). The second part sends back any URI that doesn't start with /store/catalog and says "use an address that starts with /store/catalog".

 

If your host allows only one 301 redirect at a time, try this:

RewriteEngine On
# www.mysite.com/store/catalog leave alone

RewriteCond  %{HTTP_HOST}  ^www\.mysite\.com
RewriteCond  %{REQUEST_URI  !^/store/catalog  [NC]
RewriteRule  ^(.*)  http://www.mysite.com/store/catalog/$1 [R=301,L]

RewriteCond  %{HTTP_HOST}  ^mysite\.com
RewriteCond  %{REQUEST_URI}  ^/store/catalog  [NC]
RewriteRule  ^(.*)$  http://www.mysite.com/store/catalog/$1 [R=301,L]

RewriteCond  %{HTTP_HOST}  ^mysite\.com
RewriteCond  %{REQUEST_URI}  !^/store/catalog  [NC]
RewriteRule  ^(.*)$  http://www.mysite.com/store/catalog/$1 [R=301,L]

[Cheepnis]

Phil, I tried both suggestions (after stripping out everything else in my htaccess and clearing my cache) and they both return this error message:

 

The page isn't redirecting properly. Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete.

[MrPhil]

Did you modify my code at all (except for the domain name), like you did before?

[Cheepnis]

Did you modify my code at all (except for the domain name), like you did before?

No, except for adding a closing brace that was left out of line 2 in the second example and using my domain, I cut and pasted them exactly.

[MrPhil]

Sorry about the typo. If you're running exactly what I gave above (with typo fixed -- you can change ^(.*) to ^(.*)$ too if you wish), I do see a bug in the second stanza. Change it from

RewriteCond  %{HTTP_HOST}  ^mysite\.com
RewriteCond  %{REQUEST_URI}  ^/store/catalog  [NC]
RewriteRule  ^(.*)$  http://www.mysite.com/store/catalog/$1 [R=301,L]

to

RewriteCond  %{HTTP_HOST}  ^mysite\.com
RewriteCond  %{REQUEST_URI}  ^/store/catalog  [NC]
RewriteRule  ^store/catalog/?(.*)$  http://www.mysite.com/store/catalog/$1 [R=301,NC,L]

You were probably getting http://www.mysite.com/store/catalog/store/catalog/......./xxxxx with the original. Sorry!

[Cheepnis]

Nope - still didn't work. I'm pretty much giving up at this point.