htaccess redirect question

[JonathanB]

I just got WordPress installed and running on my site (I was using Greymatter). WordPress is some tasty software.

Anyway, my site's home page used to be index.html and now it's index.php and I want to make sure anyone that goes to http://mysite.com/index.html gets redirected to the new page. I've been playing around with various rewrite commands like:

Redirect /index.html /index.php
Redirect http://mysite.com/index.html http://mysite.com//index.php

and all I'm getting are error messages. I'm obviously not doing something right and after reading through some of the tutorials on .htaccess my brain is fried. What am I doing wrong?

[JonathanB]

One more question...

Is is possible to redirect to the root instead of index.php?

[Spathiphyllum]

# Enable mod_rewrite
RewriteEngine On

# Set a basic rule
RewriteRule ^index.html index.php    [NC]

# or

# Set a basic rule for "root"
RewriteRule ^index.html /    [NC]

[Spathiphyllum]

How permanent do you want to indicate such redirects, if at all? You may want to tweak it to say "temporary" or "permanent" or something else. As it is, it just returns a "200 OK" response header, which is fine but may not be exactly what you want.

[Rye Seronie Oh]

Why not a simple

RedirectPermanent index.html /index.php

No mod_rewrite required.

[Percipient]

Redirect /index.html /index.php
Redirect http://mysite.com/index.html http://mysite.com//index.php

You need a combination of these, and a number.

Redirect 301 /index.html http://mysite.com/index.php

You can refer to the Apache manual on the redirect directive.

Basically, the number is the type of redirect. In my example, 301 is a permanant, so search engines will start indexing the new content and scrapping the old page. You could probably also use 303, which is a seeother status, indicating that the resource has been replaced. Not sure how well that one works though. 301 is good.

Next is the old file name, relative to your domain. note the starting slash.

The last is the redirect destination, which must be an absolute URL, even if the file's on your own site.

One more question...

Is is possible to redirect to the root instead of index.php?

Yes.

Redirect 301 /index.html http://mysite.com/

Hope that helps you.

[Connie]

Avoid 302 redirects. Google in particular has problems with them.

[JonathanB]

Thanks for all the help guys. I did try a few of the suggestions and I'm still getting error messages like:

Redirection limit for this URL exceeded.

There was a pretty long list of mod_rewrite rules I added to my .htaccess file so the permalink structure would be clean and friendly like:

http://example.com/archives/2005/6/24/post-title

I think that's probably what's interfering with the redirection I'm trying to do.

For now I've set up my custom 404 page to direct visitors to the right spot. I'll think I'll watch the error log file and see if there are lot of people going to the index.html file or not.

[Vin DSL]

Redirection limit for this URL exceeded.

Heh! That means you're stuck in a friggin' loop! After x-number of redirections, it gives up (thank God)...

I'd be inclined to try:

Redirect 301 /index.html  http://mysite.com/index.php

[Gwaihir]

There was a pretty long list of mod_rewrite rules I added to my .htaccess file so the permalink structure would be clean and friendly like:

http://example.com/archives/2005/6/24/post-title

I think that's probably what's interfering with the redirection I'm trying to do.

In that case, I would suggest you use the mod_rewrite way of solving this problem (as suggested first).

While the guys (m/f) are right that the redirect method is, by itself, a simpler way of solving the question asked, I do think it's best to avoid using both redirect and mod_rewrite in one place. As the first isn't elaborate enough for you (can't do that "clean and friendly" thing), best to now do all your rewriting / redirecting with the latter.

[JonathanB]

You're absolutely right Gwaihir, I scrapped the redirect statement and used the rewrite Spathiphyllum mentioned near the top of this thread, and that did the trick.

Now if I just would have listened to Spath when he first suggested that...

Thanks guys!

[JonathanB]

How permanent do you want to indicate such redirects, if at all? You may want to tweak it to say "temporary" or "permanent" or something else. As it is, it just returns a "200 OK" response header, which is fine but may not be exactly what you want.

Okay, I just realized I forgot the issue about it being a permanent change.

After reading a few .htaccess sites, I think I should use the below statement, right?

RewriteRule ^index.html / [R=301]

[Spathiphyllum]

...After reading a few .htaccess sites, I think I should use the below statement, right?

RewriteRule ^index.html / [R=301]

Yes, that syntax is correct to indicate a 301 redirect. The "NC" can be added if you want to disregard case for any derived URL:

RewriteRule ^index.html / [NC,R=301]

Note from mod_rewrite that "when you use this flag, make sure that the substitution field is a valid URL! If not, you are redirecting to an invalid location! And remember that this flag itself only prefixes the URL with http://thishost[:thisport]/, rewriting continues. Usually you also want to stop and do the redirection immediately. To stop the rewriting you also have to provide the 'L' flag."

What does this mean? Try:

RewriteRule ^index.html / [NC,R=301,L]

to end the rewrites and URL processing as soon as the rule has been successfully applied. It should speed things up a little bit and might eliminate confusion from other chains beyond that rule.

[JonathanB]

Try:

RewriteRule ^index.html / [NC,R=301,L]

to end the rewrites and URL processing as soon as the rule has been successfully applied. It should speed things up a little bit and might eliminate confusion from other chains beyond that rule.

When I read about the L rule on those .htaccess websites, I got confused and didn't want to mess up the WordPress rules below that in the .htaccess file.

So you're saying if the system runs the above rule, it will stop after that rule and not run any rules in the .htaccess file after that. If it doesn't run the above rule, it will continue on to the other rules below. Is that right?

[Ron]

Yes. But remember, after the redirect, it will be coming back and be subject to all of your rules again.