a .htaccess question (redirection)

[effisk]

Hi everyone,

I have a tricky (at least to me) problem with htaccess. Here it is:

I own sub.domain.com on which I have a website.
I have recently bought newdomain.com to to use instead of sub.domain.com for this website.

The site is still hosted at the same place, so currently pages are available thru both URLs.

I want to permanently move the site from the subdomain to the new domain.

My pages currently are:
sub.domain.com/?-name-of-page
also accessible thru
sub.domain.com/index.php?name-of-page

I currently use these lines of code in my .htaccess file for the redirection:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} sub\.domain\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [R=permanent,L]

It does the trick for sub.domain.com/?-name-of-page (it redirects to newdomain.com/?-name-of-page) but it does not work for sub.domain.com/index.php?-name-of-page

hom come? What did I do wrong and what should I change?

I don't know much about .htaccess redirection, and I could not find any info for this specific problem on the internet, so if someone has any knowledge in that field, please enlighten me.
Just one thing, I cannot use mod_rewrite (deactivated by my provider).

example of the problem here:

-http://surf-bodyboard.effisk.net/?2005/03/15/1-acheter
(this one is redirected ok)

-http://surf-bodyboard.effisk.net/index.php?2005/03/15/1-acheter
(this is the same page - slightly different url - redirection does not work).

[effisk]

adding these lines below the existing ones makes no difference:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} sub\.domain\.com/index\.php$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [R=permanent,L]

[effisk]

Maybe I should have posted this in the SEO forum...

[incrediblehelp]

So this is the code and it is not working:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^http://surf-bodyboard.effisk.net/ind...3/15/1-acheter
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.surf-blog.net/?2005/03/15/1-acheter/$1 [R=301,L]

?

I would also try posting here:

http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum92/page116.htm

[effisk]

thanks for your reply.

I tried the code you osted, it does nothing. No redirection at all.

I tried my luck at WMW...

thanks.

[incrediblehelp]

Weird, dont know sorry.

[cyanide]

I don't know why you are using a re-write condition. A simple re-direction should work.

Permanent 301 / http://www.newdomain.com

You should also create a custom 404 error page on the sub-domain, which contain links to the new domain.

Web Hosting | Webmaster Help

[effisk]

Hi.

Originally Posted by cyanide

I don't know why you are using a re-write condition. A simple re-direction should work.

Permanent 301 / http://www.newdomain.com

Sorry my original post wasn't very clear:
sub.domain.com and newdomain.com are the same site. hosted at the same place.
newdomain.com/index.php is not a copy of sub.domain.com/index.php, it is the same page.

because of the above reason, your suggestion won't work. It will create a loop and end up telling the visitor that the maximum redirection limit has been hit and the page won't be served.

[steve0]

What about adding something like the quick, dirty, and unrefined code below to index.php:

<?
$hostname =getenv('HTTP_HOST');

$page= getenv("REQUEST_URI");

$new_destination="http://yournewdomain".$page;

if (stristr($hostname,"yoursubdomain")){
header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");
header("Location: $new_destination");
exit();
}
?>

[effisk]

Originally Posted by steve0

What about adding something like the quick, dirty, and unrefined code below to index.php:

<?
$hostname =getenv('HTTP_HOST');

$page= getenv("REQUEST_URI");

$new_destination="http://yournewdomain".$page;

if (stristr($hostname,"yoursubdomain")){
header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");
header("Location: $new_destination");
exit();
}
?>

believe it or not, it has no effect! at all

I don't get it.

[brian.mark]

Here is a working sample:

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

That redirects toolbarn.com to www.toolbarn.com for us. In your case, it could be modified to the following and should work:

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

Is that of any help?

Brian.

[effisk]

Originally Posted by brian.mark

Is that of any help?

No. It has the same effect as the code proposed previously. Does the job for urls without the index.php only.



*crying of despair*

[brian.mark]

Do you have any other lines in the .htaccess file before these? These should be the first lines of your file for them to work properly.

If you'd like me to really dig, pm me for an email address that you can send login info to. You can delete / change the login when I'm done. I'm just really curious and would love to see it work right.

Brian.

[effisk]

Originally Posted by brian.mark

Do you have any other lines in the .htaccess file before these? These should be the first lines of your file for them to work properly.

Ok here's the whole content of the file:


RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} sub\.domain\.com(:[0-9]{1,5})?$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [R=permanent,L]


# Hotlink control
SetEnvIfNoCase Referer "^http://sub.domain.com" local_referal
SetEnvIfNoCase Referer "^http://www.newdomain.com" local_referal
SetEnvIfNoCase Referer "^http://www.other-domain.net" local_referal
SetEnvIfNoCase Referer "^$" local_referal

<FilesMatch "\.(gif|jpe?g|png)$">
Order Deny,Allow
Deny From All
Allow from env=local_referal
</FilesMatch>

errordocument 403 /403.html
errordocument 404 /404.html

I also tried to only leave the RewriteEngine rules and remove the rest, no difference.

Originally Posted by brian.mark

If you'd like me to really dig, pm me for an email address that you can send login info to. You can delete / change the login when I'm done. I'm just really curious and would love to see it work right.

So do I. :/

I'm not sure I can grant you access to my ftp. I have limited rights to this account.

[brian.mark]

Well... if I'm reading this part right

sub\.domain\.com(:[0-9]{1,5})?$

that is saying it's looking for any port (up to 5 digits) and a ? right after it. Have you tried getting rid of the ? in that particular line? This is a real odd one... most people don't bother with the port directives since 80 is covered by default and they don't run Apache on any other ports.

Brian.

[effisk]

If I remove the ? it doesn't redirect any page anymore.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} sub\.domain\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [R=permanent,L]

has the same effect as what I currently have.

[brian.mark]

Have you considered redirecting index.php to / at all? That could solve the problem here as well as avoid duplicate content in the search engine indexes. Otherwise, I'm totally drawing a blank.

Brian.

[effisk]

Originally Posted by brian.mark

Have you considered redirecting index.php to / at all?

Actually no I haven't. How can I do that? Using the .htaccess file?

thanks for the time you spend on this.

[effisk]

I just tried:

Redirect /index.php http://www.newdomain.com/

no success.

[brian.mark]

Try it to the same domain.

redirect 301 /index.php http://subdomain.olddomain.com/

Or, use a rewrite.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^index.php(.+)$ http://subdomain.olddomain.com/$1

I'm joining you... banging head on desk... "This shouldn't be that hard of a problem!!!"

Brian.

[effisk]

I tried both, first along with the rest of my code, then on its own in the .htaccess.

Same results as before. There must be some other parameter that has an impact outside of this htaccess file, but what, and why?

I've cleaned up the web from links to pages with index.php, I guess I'll just wait till SE stop indexing these pages and I'll leave the htaccess as is.

I wrote to my provider about this problem, I'll keep you posted if I have a reply.

This is very weird but I'm sure it's something simple that we haven't thought of.