mod_rewrite configuration does not work - apache

Question

I have a page with urls like this:
http://example.com/index.php?site=contact
http://example.com/index.php?site=about
So I try to create custom urls like
http://example.com/contact-the-person
http://example.com/cityname/about
to avoid duplicate content the first url need a permanent redirect into the new code.
this is my code:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} \s/+index\.php?site=contact[\s?] [NC]
RewriteRule ^/contact-the-person [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^contact-the-person/?$ index.php?site=contact [L,NC]
Update:
I changed my code into
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^cityname/about$ index.php?site=contact
and it works now. I can open the url with both links
http://example.com/index.php?site=contact
http://example.com/cityname/about
I just need a redirect from the php version to the clean url now, to avoid dublicate content

Answer 1

Get rid of RewriteBase, if your base is / it is redundant and just complicates things. I am not sure what your RewriteCond is doing, but it isn't necessary to do the 2 rewrites you describe in the question, so get rid of it too.
To make /contact-the-person work:
RewriteRule ^/contact-the-person index.php?site=contact [L,NC]
To make /cityname/about work:
RewriteRule ^/cityname/about index.php?site=about [L,NC]
So the complete file:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^/contact-the-person /index.php?site=contact [L,NC]
RewriteRule ^/cityname/about /index.php?site=about [L,NC]
UPDATE
To also redirect your index.php?site=contact links to the new pretty format, you'll need to do an external redirect, so that the browser actually makes a new request, and the URL in the browser changes. Do that by adding R to the flags. 301 specifies the http response header, and will ensure your link rankings are preserved. For the example you gave, add a new rule:
RewriteRule ^/index.php?site=contact /contact-the-person [L,R=301]