I am new to URL rewriting and I have an .htaccess file that looks like this:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule /*\.(css|js|gif|png|jpe?g)$ - [NC,L]
RewriteRule "^(.*)$" "www/index.php?_url=$1" [QSA,L]
Does this code just rewrite the code internally, or is it supposed to change to URL in the address bar? As of now it does not change the address bar, and I'm not really sure yet but I am thinking that I will probably want the option to do so for bookmarking purposes. So if there is a way could you please let me know or direct me to a pretty noob friendly guide on URL rewriting where I can figure it out on my own because I haven't been able to find one.
Thanks for the help!
As it stands, it will just do an internal rewrite. To redirect the user (thereby changing their address bar), add R to the flags (e.g. [NC,R,L] or [R,QSA,L])
URL rewriting is completely server-side (unless you do a redirect). The client (and thus their address bar) will not know what the server is doing with the URL.
Here's a good beginner tutorial that explains URL rewriting and goes through progressively more complex examples.
Related
I have a page at example.com/themizer.php, but I want it to appear that it's actually located at example.com/themizer/ (or example.com/themizer/index.php) for all practical purposes. I know how to basically make an alias for it with mod_rewrite, but how do I make it appear that users are being redirected to that alias? Example: a user requests example.com/themizer.php and the address in their browser turns into example.com/themizer/ without actually redirecting. Is this possible?
With server-sided configuration, you can only accomplish this with a redirect. This does not necessarily need to be a problem. Just make sure that the urls on your site point to the fancy url and not to the internal url. Otherwise you generate a lot of requests that have to be redirected, instead of just redirecting the odd request that came in in an other way (e.g. through an external old url or old bookmark). You do it like this:
#External redirect
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^GET\ /themizer\.php\ HTTP
RewriteRule ^themizer\.php$ /themizer/ [R,L]
#Internal rewrite
RewriteRule ^themizer/?$ themizer.php [L]
If you really must, you can use javascript to 'push' a new window state into the history, updating the address bar. This causes the "go to previous page" button in your browser to contain bogus though. In other words: Going to the previous page does not work as expected, which I would not recommend since there is a better option available. You can do it with the following javascript statement in browsers that support it:
window.history.pushState( null, document.title, "/themizer" );
I did a search of previous questions about URL redirects with parameters, but none seem to speak to my particular problem. I'm not a programmer so I don't really know how to adapt other suggestions to my situation. Specific HTACCESS strings to try (and adapt for other URLs) would really help me.
I did an SEO restructure of my WP blog permalinks and I am finding that although the naked URLs are redirecting OK, URLs with parameters are not redirecting, they are going to a 404 error. I need URL parameters because my site is multilingual (Transposh plugin) so the "lang" parameter tells the site what language to translate the content to.
I think I may need to create a bunch of HTACCESS redirects that will redirect old URLs with a language parameter to the new permalinks for those URLs and pass the lang parameter through.
An example of this would be:
Source URL: /this-old-postname/?lang=(*)
Destination URL /blog/this-new-postname/?lang=$
There's no way to predict the URL pattern (although the parameter pattern is predictable) as each URL was tweaked for best SEO contribution.
I expect I'll need to write lots of these, each unique, so if you are able to provide an example can you please provide it for two redirects which would work for the following actual examples?
Source: http://www.travelnasia.com/thailand/bangkok/don-mueang-airport/?lang=zh
Destination: http://www.travelnasia.com/thailand/don-mueang-airport-bangkok/?lang=zh
Source: http://www.travelnasia.com/blog/map-attractions-bangkok-skytrain/?lang=zh
Destination: http://www.travelnasia.com/blog/bangkok-skytrain-bts-mrt-lines/?lang=zh
MOD_REWRITE is already enabled and standard redirects created in HTACCESS do work. I am pretty sure to achieve this I will need to use:
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^lang=(.*)$
I understand this ensures the query string is read from the source URL.
I thought a redirect rule like this should work, but it doesn't:
RewriteRule ^test-redirect/$ http://test.travelnasia.com/destination/hanoi/hanoi-vietnam-destination-guide/$1 [L,QSA]
I've tried lots of other combinations but none of them seem to work.
Thanks in advance for any help offered.
Tony
If you don't mind including other query string parameters, [QSA] (query string append) is by far your simplest option.
Make it a 301 redirect with [R=301] if this is permanent change.
This should work for your purposes
RewriteEngine on # if not already enabled
RewriteRule ^thailand/bangkok/don-mueang-airport/?$ /thailand/don-mueang-airport-bangkok/ [QSA,R=301]
RewriteRule ^/blog/map-attractions-bangkok-skytrain/?$ /blog/bangkok-skytrain-bts-mrt-lines/ [QSA,R=301]
# ...
I'm trying to set up a redirect on a WP blog installation that will detect anyone coming in from nowhere (i.e. not from another site). The idea is to trap some of the spambots that plug pre-constructed URLs into the system to create comments/posts. I figure if they don't have a referrer site, I can pop them back to the homepage (www.domain.com/index.php or just www.domain.com), which should mess with the bots but not with real people.
I understand that the referrers can be forged but hopefully it'll stop the stupids, at least.
I have very little clue about .htaccess rewrite rules (I apologise for being a noob), but I couldn't find one that did this in existing answers or anywhere else online, despite several searches. Either no one's done it or I'm not phrasing correctly.
Any help appreciated. :)
I'd advise against this. By doing it, you may annoy and alienate a portion of potential your users: for example my browser is set not to report referer information, others use anonymity networks. The dump bots you can catch by matching their reported user agent string (as seen here).
Otherwise it's simple: match against the HTTP_REFERER environmental variable in a RewriteCond:
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^$
RewriteRule .* http://example.com/
The RewriteCond checks to see if the referer is an empty string; the RewriteRule redirects everything to http://example.com/ root. This is a hard redirect, meaning that the server will issue an R=301 moved permanently header. If you just want to sneakily serve another resource, use a soft redirect by specifying a relative URL, like RewriteRule .* index.php. However, it may be kinder for people not reporting referrer information to redirect them to a page saying something like "You should enable referrer reporting if you want to read this page".
For more examples on such things, see the manual. There's a very similar prevent-hotlinking method there.
May be a noob question but I'm just starting playing around with apache and have not found a precise answer yet.
I am setting up a web app using url-rewriting massively, to show nice urls like [mywebsite.com/product/x] instead of [mywebsite.com/app/controllers/product.php?id=x].
However, I can still access the required page by typing the url [mywebsite.com/app/controllers/product.php?id=x]. I'd like to make it not possible, ie. redirect people to an error page if they do so, and allow them to access this page with the "rewritten" syntax only.
What would be the easiest way to do that? And do you think it is a necessary measure to secure an app?
In your PHP file, examine the $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] and ensure it is being accessed the way you want it to be.
There is no reason why this should be a security issue.
RewriteCond %{REDIRECT_URL} ! ^/app/controllers/product.php$
RewriteRule ^app/controllers/product.php$ /product/x [R,L]
RewriteRule ^product/(.*)$ /app/controllers/product.php?id=$1 [L]
The first rule will redirect any request to /app/controllers/product.php with no REDIRECT_URL variable set to the clean url. The Rewrite (last rule) will set this variable when calling the real page and won't be redirected.
Using the following Rewrite rule:
RewriteRule ^page.html$ /secretpage.php [L]
Is there anyway someone can know that the page being served now is /secretpage.php on the server?
I am not asking if someone can get to this page alone by typing it in the URL line, but rather if someone can know about the rewrite that was made on the server side.
Thanks,
Joel
No, unless you make that rewrite an external redirect, the rewrite is only done internally. An external redirect happens either explicitly by using the R flag or implicitly when an absolute URL is used as substitution (although there are some further restrictions).
But the substition is still accessible when requesting it directly. So your rule will only add a way to access secretpage.php and it is then accessible by both /page.html and /secretpage.php.
I don't think it's possible as it's the server which perform rewriting. Anyway request's headers don't let see anything.