Question

I have an .htaccess file using mod_rewrite to redirect URLs from the old website to the new webpage equivalents. The new site can be viewed at www.eastwood-whelpton.co.uk (which only works in HTML5 browsers right now).

So far, I have got this working by making lots of Redirect Permanent statements to translate each of the old pages to a place in the new site.

This has worked until I’ve needed to create a subdomain for the old website (which I need to keep). Before, it was just in the folder /old/, but Google still crawls it despite not being allowed from Robots.txt. To fix this, I’ve put it in the subdomain ‘old’.

Problem now is, accessing a page such as old.eastwood-whelpton.co.uk/about.htm will still try to redirect to old.eastwood-whelpton.co.uk/about/about.php – which is on the new site.

Here’s a snippet of my HTACCESS file. All I need is to redirect old ‘www’ pages, but not old pages in the ‘old’ subdomain.

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^eastwood-whelpton [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]

DirectoryIndex index.php

Redirect permanent /index.htm /index.php
Redirect permanent /index.html /index.php

Redirect permanent /yachthire.htm /holidays/sailingholidays.php
Redirect permanent /yachts.htm /about/thefleet.php
Redirect permanent /handover.htm /training/handover.php
Redirect permanent /holiday.htm /holidays/familyholidays.php

Answer 1

First of all, Redirect is a directive from mod_alias

Do not mix them! Your Redirect directive will execute in-spite of Whatever RewriteRule you have.

Do this instead:

I have changed your Redirects to RewriteRule and tweaked them a bit. Have added,

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^old [NC]
RewriteRule ^ – [L]

This will not redirect any of your old site URLs.

Here is the whole :

RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^old [NC]
RewriteRule ^ - [L]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^eastwood-whelpton [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]

DirectoryIndex index.php

ReWriteRule index\.html? /index.php [L,R=301]
ReWriteRule yachthire\.htm /holidays/sailingholidays.php [L,R=301]
ReWriteRule yachts\.htm /about/thefleet.php [L,R=301]
ReWriteRule (handover)\.htm /training/$1.php [L,R=301]
ReWriteRule (holiday)\.htm /holidays/family$1s.php [L,R=301]