mod_rewrite

[Ron]

Ok, I am going out of my mind...


All I want to do is to redirect the hostname....

from

http://www.site.com/subdomain/(.*)
to
http://subdomain.site.com/$1

And I can't get this thing to do it.

I've got the .htaccess file in the subdomain
It apparently is being used, because the closest I got was an endless redirect loop. Every ohter time the URL remains the same in the browser.

Stupid MSN is indexing my forum from the former I want to redirect them to the latter.

Any suggestions?

Thanks

[Ron]

Aaaaaaaaggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhh

[Ron]

The solution, was just as I imagined... and maybe there's an easier way... but

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST}   !^subdomain.domain.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$         http://subdomain.domain.com/$1 [L,R=301]

The problem, he says, after spending 3 hours on this......

Was ... I have no idea.

I thought it was because I had a comment line inbetween my rewritecond and my rewriterule.. but I just checked and it worked just fine with one in there.

[Ron]

This doesn't work for the case of the missing slash.

www.domain.com/subdomain is redirected to... get this...

subdomain.domain.com//home/<domain>/public_html/subdomain (it gives up its internal path!)


grrrrrrrrr Where the resident 17k .htaccess guy?

[Ron]

Ok, this looks like it works....at the moment, anyway.

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI}   ^/subdomain$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$         http://subdomain.domain.com/ [L,R=301]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST}   !^subdomain.domain.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$         http://subdomain.domain.com/$1 [L,R=301]

The first set check to see if this is an un-trailing-slash'ed request for the subdomain via the incorrect path. If it is, rewrite to correct format and end.
The second set checks for any other occurence of the imporper url, and if it finds it, rewrites to the proper address and exits.

[Ron]

Only two anomalies so far.... of course you can't actually have a subdirectory with the same name as the subdomain directory ie you can't have <domain>/subdomain/subdomain...

And for some reason [NC] doesn't work (it's not in the above example) when testing against the REQUEST_URI. Very strange, and I don't see anything about it in the manual.

Time for bed.

[jason]

Ron,

Having fun talking to yourself? I hear Quabbin water makes people do that.

Have you tried the more basic RedirectMatch directive? If you put this in your public_html's .htaccess I think it should solve your woes:

RedirectMatch 301 ^/subdomain(/(.*))?$ http://subdomain.domain.com/$2

Good luck.

--Jason

[Ron]

That looks like it might work, too.... but I encountered a problem that was a show stopper, I had to revert.

I have an internal rewrite to /subdomain/file.shtml. It was being rewritten as expected (ahhh as one would expect the rewrite to behave, I didn't expect the error! )

Unfortunately, the code was depends upon the request coming from the original domain structure. When the browser displayed links, even though the url in the address showed the original domain structure, the relative links all were pointing to locations in the subdomain!!!

heres an example.

Someone points their browser at www.domain.com/foo/a.html
internally, I rewrite that to /subdirectory/b.shtml
The new rewrite directs it, (interanally also!) to subdomain.domain.com/b.shtml
b.shtml executes php code in the subdirectory
Page is returned with www./domain.com/foo/a.html remaining in the url text box
links on page are relative to subdomain.domain.com, and point to non-existant locations.

Sooooo, until I rewrite that code to execute from another directory (but it's stupid phpBB code whose code depends on a particular hierarchical structure), or figure out how to avoid having that rewrite ignore that redirect (probably a rewritecond mathcihng the filename with a do nothing and exit flag) the MSNbot can have its way with my directories.

[Vin DSL]

Ron,

Having fun talking to yourself?

'mod_rewrite' has that effect on you. I do it all the time - here and elsewhere. Actually, it's the best way! Talking to yourself, with a Red Dog in one hand, and a mouse in the other is a cathartic experience. Highly recommended when working with .htaccess...

[Ron]

Talking to myself,,, ohh yeah! The last thing that made me erally start to blather was when I was testing the [NC] flag and found that it doesn't work on the fist Rewritecond, but does on the second Rewritecond... so I removed it.

It was a frustrating night.

[Spathiphyllum]

I know better than to offer 'mod_rewrite' advice until I have tested it pretty thoroughly on my own. I'd hate to confuse a rule and get your site looping to itself and bog down the server or your site. It's always a "buyer beware" situation especially when advice is free, but still...

[Vin DSL]

'mod_rewrite' is voodoo. If you don't believe this:

http://www.google.com/search?sourcei...rewrite+voodoo

[Spathiphyllum]

If you don't believe this:

Oh, I know it all too well (figuratively, not literally).

I think I have this link (Apache rewriting guide) and some of the graphics memorized. The answers are there in cryptic form. I just wince every time I need to go through it.

[Vin DSL]

Yeah, well... I'm pretty comfortable with it these days. I can usually make it do what I want, with a little coaxing. However, it didn't come easily. It was definitely a steep learing curve - probably took a year or two before it started making sense. And, that's a long time when you're racking your brain!

I remember the first time I discovered 'mod_rewrite'. It gave me nightmares. I'd read threads by guys doing SEO with it, and couldn't figure out what the hell they were talking about, no matter how hard I tried. Truely, there is nothing else quite like it...

[Ron]

I can't believe how stupid I've been about this.

Here is the solution, I think:
In the main directory....

robots.txt:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /subdirectory

Won't this accomplish exactly what I'm trying to do? The (good) spiders will come in and look at the robots.txt in the main directory before trying to index anything in

domain.com/subdirectory

and will be looking at robots.txt in the subdirectory before trying to spider anything in the

subdomain.domain.com

format. Won't this just sorta work for me?

BTW I intend to place the following robots.txt files:

in the main directory:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /subdirectory

in the subdirectory:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /admin/
Disallow: /images/
Disallow: /includes/
Disallow: /language/
Disallow: /templates/
Disallow: /common.php
Disallow: /groupcp.php
Disallow: /modcp.php
Disallow: /login.php
Disallow: /posting.php
Disallow: /privmsg.php
Disallow: /viewonline.php
Disallow: /faq.php

These are the complete files, i.e. there will be nothing else in them. I don't currently have any robots.txt files. I am trying to use them in conjuction with my phpBB forums.

Any comments on these files before I shoot myself in the foot (again)?