Question

I have written an external redirect file for use in a site. The redirect works perfectly, but when I add a 404 rule, the redirect breaks. At that point, 404 works, but the redirect does not. I’ve also tried keeping the redirect rules inside of the web.config file (instead of as a separate file), but this does not work either.

Can anyone figure out how I can get my redirects and 404 rules working in tandem?

Below is the code for the redirect in the web.config file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<configuration>
    <system.webServer>
        <rewrite>
            <rewriteMaps configSource="rewritemaps.config" />
            <rules>
                <rule name="Redirect rule1 for Redirects">
                    <match url=".*" />
                    <conditions>
                       <add input="{Redirects:{REQUEST_URI}}" pattern="(.+)" />
                    </conditions>
                    <action type="Redirect" url="{C:1}" appendQueryString="false" />
                </rule>
            </rules>
        </rewrite>
    </system.webServer>
</configuration>

The external file referenced above looks like this:

<rewriteMaps>  
    <rewriteMap name="Redirects">  
        <add key="/old_page.html" value="/new_page.html" />  
    </rewriteMap>  
</rewriteMaps>

At this point everything works great. However, as soon as I add the following, the 404 works great, but the redirect does not work.

<httpErrors>
    <remove statusCode="404" subStatusCode="-1" />
    <error statusCode="404" prefixLanguageFilePath="" path="/page-not-found.html" responseMode="ExecuteURL" />
</httpErrors>

The total code that does not work is as follows:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<configuration>
    <system.webServer>
        <rewrite>
            <rewriteMaps configSource="rewritemaps.config" />
            <rules>
                <rule name="Redirect rule1 for Redirects">
                    <match url=".*" />
                    <conditions>
                       <add input="{Redirects:{REQUEST_URI}}" pattern="(.+)" />
                    </conditions>
                    <action type="Redirect" url="{C:1}" appendQueryString="false" />
                </rule>
            </rules>
        </rewrite>
        <httpErrors>
            <remove statusCode="404" subStatusCode="-1" />
            <error statusCode="404" prefixLanguageFilePath="" path="/page-not-found.html" responseMode="ExecuteURL" />
        </httpErrors>
    </system.webServer>
</configuration>

Answer 1

Your config is fine — no issues here.

Try recycling app pool .. or restart IIS service.