Question

I’m trying to get http://www.example.com and http://www.example.com/index.html to go to index.html, but I want all other urls e.g. http://www.example.com/this/is/another/link to still show http://www.example.com/this/is/another/link but be processed by a generic script. I’ve tried

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^index\.html$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ mygenericscript.php [L]

but it wont work, can someone please help?

Answer 1

Instead of testing what %{REQUEST_URI} is, you can instead just test if the resource exists:

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule .* mygenericscript.php

This prevents your static resources (images, stylesheets, etc.) from being redirected if they’re handled through the same directory your .htaccess is in as well.

What’s probably happening now is that you’re seeing an internal server error, caused by an infinite internal redirection loop when you try to access anything that isn’t / or /index.html. This is because .* matches every request, and after you rewrite to mygenericscript.php the first time, the rule set is reprocessed (because of how mod_rewrite works in the context that you’re using it in).