500 server error from htaccess

[inertia]

Quick guys i need some help! Ive just added this .htaccess file to a site and now im getting a 500 internal server error.

Is there anything wrong with this???

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^/index\.php$ http://www.domain.co.uk/ [R=301, L]
RewriteRule ^(.*)/index\.php$ http://www.domain.uk/$1/ [R=301, L]

[inertia]

By the way - its a linux server with apache.

[minstrel]

Try adding

Options +FollowSymLinks

before

RewriteEngine on

Then remove one of the ReWrite lines, probably the first one.

And you should only have one line terminating in ",L]

[inertia]

Cheers for the help minstrel. htaccess is not one of my strong points!

Would this code work the same?

redirect 301 /index.php  http://www.domain.co.uk

[minstrel]

Yes. That should work.

[inertia]

Can i just clear up something that I'm unclear of....?

All suggestions for getting rid of canonicalization advice given out on this forum suggests using mod rewrite to get rid of /index.php.

If the standard htaccess 301 code works as well then why is mod rewrite the suggested method?

[wige]

I think it is the suggested method because it is often already being used to deal with www.domain.tld vs domain.tld issues, so adding two more rules is often easier to explain.

You can do both of your redirects with a more traditional approach, which I would recommend over mod_rewrite if you are not already using mod_rewrite for another purpose.

Redirect 301 /index.php http://www.domain.com/
RedirectMatch 301 /(.*)/index.php http://www.domain.com/$1/

This method avoids the extra overhead of enabling the rewrite engine. However, if you already use mod_rewrite to perform internal redirects (converting URLs to query strings in a way invisible to visitors and bots) you won't save any overhead since the engine is already activated. In that case you would just use whichever method you are more comfortable with.

[inertia]

This code didnt work at all! Got me in trouble with the boss as well!

 redirect 301 /index.php http://www.domain.co.uk

[wige]

What happens when someone tries to access the /index.php page with that redirect code in use? Still the error 500?

[inertia]

It comes up with an error screen saying there a redirect error when you try the root URL. It works if you try it with the /index.php?

[wige]

If you remove the redirect rule, does the root URL automatically redirect to the /index.php version? It is possible there is an opposite rule elsewhere that breaks the redirection that you are trying to do.

[Manpasand]

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

Use to deal with www.domain.com vs domain.com canonicalization issues.

[Manpasand]

Here is another sticky thread on canonicalization issue.