301 reditects, .htaccess and Wordpress

[Uncle Dog]

Does anything get redirected?

[morestar]

Yes only to the 404 page if I visit a url that doesn't exist...that still works...I'm finding virtually nothing in search which helps with wordpress and .htaccess redirects...well I mean in regard to this particular problem. I think it's cause the redirect IS setup to go to the 404 page...

[Uncle Dog]

No again. Wordpress writes the conditional in .htaccess to say -
if you can do redirects
if a visitor's looking for files or directories that don't exist, send them to index.php
So if you're seeing a 404...

Either you can't use .htaccess or the request isn't getting this far (getting redirected earlier).

The 404? Is it yours? Are you on a shared server? It might be a rewrite at a *higher(lower) level.

*Is it branches or is it roots?

[morestar]

Well rewrites have always seemed to work for me...on this level...never a problem...

My host is hostgator but again, never had a problem...I have these type of redirects on other sites that don't have wordpress installed...and I know from what you're saying it's nothing to do with wordpress but...

[Uncle Dog]

The 404 or Not Found error message is a HTTP standard response code indicating that the client was able to communicate with the server but the server could not find what was requested.

So you WILL see a standard 404 response for a missing file or directory from hostgator - search hostgator 404 - Google Search

That means the request never gets as *deep(high) as your .htaccess rewrite.

[morestar]

So why would the 404 page get served in the first place? If I go to other sites in my account and visit a non-existant page, I won't get an automatic 404 page displayed...

[Uncle Dog]

Uh oh!

RewriteRule http://www.mydomain.com/2009/09/seo-web-design-services http://www.mydomain.com

So if I request http://www.mydomain.com/2009/09/seo-...es/splunge.php
I'll get http://www.mydomain.com/splunge.php

Sorry.

RewriteRule http://www.mydomain.com/2009/09/seo-web-design-services.* http://www.mydomain.com

[morestar]

lol nope, I just copied your code AND had done that moments ago from what I found in a search and nada...nothing happens at all. It just sticks to the 404 page...

[morestar]

this is what I found from a search here and there...

RewriteRule http://www.mydomain.com/2009/09/seo-web-design-services.* http://www.mydomain.com

and

RewriteRule ^seo-web-design-services(.*)$ http://www. mydomain.com$1 [L,R=301]

...and that didn't work either...

[wige]

Hm. I don't think the last few will work, because you can't have a full URL with the http://domain as the first argument to RewriteRule.

Honestly, I think the problem is that in the first rule you tried, you left off the leading slash (/). IE

RewriteRule ^seo-web-design-services(.*)$ http://www. mydomain.com$1 [L,R=301]

should be

RewriteRule ^/seo-web-design-services(.*)$ http://www. mydomain.com$1 [L,R=301]

So, to go from http://www.mydomain.com/2009/09/seo-...sign-services/ to http://www.mydomain.com/, the rule should be:

RewriteRule ^/2009/09/seo-web-design-services/(.*)$ http://www.mydomain.com/ [L,R=301]

This should be the first Rewrite rule in your list, and it should 301 any request to the folder in question to the domain home page.