I'm working on a website running on an Apache server. The PHP factory makes and takes URLs that look like this:
site.com/page/view/[id]/[vanity-url]
However, the client wants to hide part of the URL from view, so in the browser it appears as:
site.com/[vanity-url]
The server still needs to see the full URL.
I've tried various RewriteRules after hours of searching, and the closest I seem to have come is:
RewriteRule ^page/view/(.*)/(.*)$ /$2 [R,L]
...but that doesn't seem to be doing anything. I know for sure that my .htacces is working.
What am I doing wrong?
Unfortunately, this isn't possible. Let me explain why:
You state that the server needs to see the full URL. Specifically, this includes the id segment, which I am sure your framework needs (it wouln't need it if the server only needs to see the vanity segment). The code you have provided redirects the full URL to the vanity URL, thus making the full URL invisible to the server for the next request.
So, navigating to /page/view/2/about-us would redirect to /about-us, and the address bar would change to reflect that. This causes a new request to be sent to the server, containing only the /about-us vanity URL.
As a result, you would need to rewrite the vanity URL back to the full URL (without redirecting, so that the /about-us stays in the address bar as-is), but you wouldn't be able to do this, as the vanity URL does not contain the id segment, which seems to be a requirement for the framework to serve the correct response. Keep in mind that Apache cannot guess the ID for that particular vanity URL.
Related
I am trying to redirect a URL to a page with an anchor tag. The redirect works but how do I keep the original URL after the redirect rather than the redirected one.
I want to redirect www.example.com/caves/ to www.example.com/trips.html#caves.
When I redirect I get the URL www.example.com/trips.html#caves but want it to keep www.example.com/caves/.
I have spent ages looking for answers but no luck, any help would be appreciated
Here is my code in htaccess
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^Caves/(.*) /trips.html#Caves [NE,L,R]
I doubt it can be done. Anchor is a client side directive and you can't "hide" it with server side rewrite (the browser can't jump to anchor if it doesn't see one), so the anchor has to be in address bar URL.
...how do I keep the original URL after the redirect rather than the redirected one.
You want an internal rewrite, as opposed to an external redirect - which is what you are currently doing with the use of the R (redirect) flag on the RewriteRule.
RewriteRule ^Caves/(.*) /trips.html#Caves [NE,L,R]
Ordinarily you could simply remove the R flag to keep the original URL in the address bar. The request is internally rewritten to /trips.html.
However, the fragment identifier (ie. #Caves - or strictly everything after the #) is lost. The request is rewritten to /trips.html, not /trips.html#Caves. The fragment identifier is evaluated by the client, not the server and is no doubt being used by your client-side JavaScript to display the appropriate content. Because of the internal rewrite, the client-side JavaScript never gets to see the fragment identifier.
However, if you are internally rewriting the request (ie. /Caves/ is still present in the address bar) then your client-side code doesn't need the #Caves fragment identifier. It can simply look at the original URL, ie. /Caves/ instead. But this will require a small change to your client-side code.
(Aside... Note that you are using Caves (capital first letter) in your code, but referring to caves (all lowercase) in your description. The directive you have written is case-sensitive, so it should be /Caves/, not /caves/ in your description?)
For example I wish to redirect list.mydomain.com to http://my.emailingapp.com/lists/
but keeping the name displayed in URL as "list.mydomain.com".
Note that all parameters are to be passed over. e.g. list.mydomain.com/?stuff=a should be the same with http://my.emailingapp.com/lists/?stuff=a
Another note: these domains are on different server.
There are many other similar posts, but all of them does not work exactly as I wanted to.
Adding a CNAME record for list.mydomain.com to my.emailingapp.com using which you can achieve the following.
URL remains list.mydomain.com
The arguments get displayed in URL as list.mydomain.com/?stuff=a
Your requirement of having /lists/ should be implementable by URL rewrite rules.
I want to ask how do I redirect Search Engines to take a second look on my new, fresh, rewritten URL-s?
So, my former URL-s were structured like this :
http://www.sample.com/tutorials.php?name=something
and now they look much more cleaner and better :
http://www.sample.com/tutorials/programming/something.php
So, as I said, I want Google (and other engines) to take a look at my new links, which are much more SEO friendly and for that I will be indexed better.
I was told the 301 redirect method was the best, but I don't have a clue what is it, how it works and where to learn how to use it. So, I am asking you.
Side note : Would updating my sitemap.xml file and re-submitting it to Google Webmaster Tools help in this process?
Thanks in advance!
There are 2 kinds (in this context) redirects. When a client, be it a browser, search engine indexing bot, or whatever, requests a URI, the server can tell the client "What you are looking for exists, but it's somewhere else". In the case of a 302 or temporary redirect, it's essentially telling the client "What you are looking for exists, but it's temporarily over here at this URL". In the case of a 301 or permanent redirect, it's essentially telling the client "What you are looking for exists, but it has permanently moved over to this URL".
In the case of the later, browsers, proxy servers, and search engine indexes know that the old URL is no longer valid and to stop using it, and from now on to use the new URL that was returned by the server via a 301 redirect. In the case of a search engine like Google, it has an index of the old URL and all the data that its accumulated over the lifetime of that URL assoicated with it. When one of its bots sees a 301, it knows that the old URL, and its content, isn't gone, but it just permanently moved to another URL. All of the associated data Google has collected for the old URL gets trasnfered to the new URL. Google can probably figure most of this stuff out without a 301 redirect, but it's a sure way to make sure Google has got a right.
You can do such a redirect via mod_rewrite:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /tutorials\.php\?name=([^&\ ]+)
RewriteRule ^ /tutorials/programming/%1.php [L,R=301]
You should put this near the top of the htaccess file in your document root. The condition checks that an actual request has been made for /tutorials.php with a query string name="something". The "something" part gets grouped by the match and is accessed via the %1 backreference.
The 301 redirect is a response that the server can make which signals to the user (or search engine) that the page they are looking for has been permanently moved to a specified other page. It is possible to configure apache to give a 301 for certain urls, but it is probably easier to have the whatever server-side language you are using take the request, and then issue a 301.
The chances are that Google will work out what is going on fairly quickly without 301s or anything else, but submitting a sitemap to them or using the URL Parameters functionality in Google's Webmaster Tools might help.
I'd like to understand the difference between redirecting and rewriting a URL using .htaccess.
So here's an example: Say I have a link like www.abc.com/ index.php?page=product_types&cat=88 (call this the "original" url)
But when the user types in abc.com/shoes (let's call this the "desired" url), they need to see the contents of the above link. To accomplish this, I would do this:
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^(.*)shoes(.*)$ index.php?page=product_types&cat=88
Nothing wrong with this code and it does the trick. However, if I type in the original url in the address bar, the content comes up, but the url does not change. So it remains as www.abc.com/index.php?page=product_types&cat=88
But what if I wanted the desired url (/shoes) to show up in the address bar if I typed in www.abc.com/ index.php?page=product_types&cat=88? How would this be accomplished using .htaccess? Am I running into a potential loop?
Some of the explanation can be found here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/11711948/851273
The gist is that a rewrite happens solely on the server, the client (browser) is blind to it. The browser sends a request and gets content, it is none the wiser to what happened on the server in order to serve the request.
A redirect is a server response to a request, that tells the client (browser) to submit a new request. The browser asks for a url, this url is what's in the location bar, the server gets that request and responds with a redirect, the browser gets the response and loads the URL in the server's response. The URL in the location bar is now the new URL and the browser sends a request for the new URL.
Simply rewriting internally on the server does absolutely nothing to URLs in the wild. If google or reddit or whatever site has a link to www.abc.com/index.php?page=product_types&cat=88, your internal server rewrite rule does absolutely nothing to that, nor to anyone who clicks on that link, or any client that happens to request that URL for any reason whatsoever. All the rewrite rule does is internally change something that contains shoes to /index.php?page=product_types&cat=88 within the server.
If you want make it so a request is made for the index.php page with all of the query strings, you can tell the client (browser) to redirect to the nicer looking URL. You need to be careful because rewrite rules loop and your redirect will be internally rewritten which will cause a redirect which will be internally rewritten, etc.. causing a loop and will throw a 500 Server Error. So you can match specifically to the request itself:
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index\.php\?page=product_types&cat=88
RewriteRule ^/?index.php$ /shoes [L,R=301]
This should only be used to make it so links in the wild get pointed to the right place. You must ensure that your content is generating the correct links. That means everything on your site is using the /shoes link instead of the /index.php?page=product_types&cat=88 link.
I want to show a page instead of another page, without change the second page url.
I know this is possible with htaccess.
I copied that code from a cms htaccess:
RewriteRule ^event-([0-9]+)\.html$ calendar.php?action=event&eid=$1 [L,QSA]
with that code, we will redirect to calendar.php?......... but I want it redirect (without changing the address in address bar) to another site, for example to http://www.google.com/page......
Is it possible?
Thanks ..
If you want to provide content from another site without changing the address in the address bar of the browser that mean you becomes a proxy.
So check apache documention for proxy configuration (this can be done for specific urls only). Even mod_rewrite can do the proxy things with the [P] tag, mod_rewrite will allow a lot more 'specific url' filtering.
Now the job of a proxy, when he have the response from the distant website and he needs to render it for the HTTP client, is only to change the HTTP headers in the response. So only url in Location tags or such specific headers will be altered. You must known that all the HTML content from the distant website will not be altered (the inner links will be on www.google.com and not on your www.whythehelldoiproxygooglewithmysite.com).
If you want to alter this returned content check mod_proxy_html module, this will add some extra stuff before sending the resonse, to do some more reverse proxy alterations.