Question

OK, so we have a specific set of rewrites that we use on a number of sites due the file structure of our programming. It’s never been a problem before until now.

For example, the rewrite:

RewriteRule ^$ Pages/news.php 

Instead of directing to http://www.domain.com/wedding-venues-and-caterers-news/Pages/news.php it is redirecting to /path/to/file/public/wedding-venues-and-caterers-news/Pages/news.php and it’s 404-ing (/path/to/file being the actual path).

If anyone could shed any light as to why this is happening, or point me in the right direction then I would be eternally grateful.

I am running all of my script and files in a subfolder, there is another .htaccess file in the root folder which I have edited in at the bottom but it doesn’t seem to contain anything that could be interfering.

If you require any further information on the server then let me know!

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EDIT – Here are all my rewrites as requested.

Options +FollowSymLinks
Options +Indexes
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^$ Pages/news.php  
RewriteRule ^images/([0-9]+)/([0-9]+)/(0|1)/(.*).jpg?$ Classes/Image/timthumb.php?src=http://www.domain.com/wedding-venues-and-caterers-news/images/$4.jpg&h=$1&w=$2&zc=$3
RewriteRule ^([A-Za-z0-9\-]+)/([0-9]+)/([0-9]+)(/)?$ Pages/archives.php?cat_id=$2&page=$3 [NC,L]
RewriteRule ^archives/mon/([0-9]+)/yr/([0-9]+)/([0-9]+)$ Pages/archives.php?mon=$1&yr=$2&page=$3 [NC,L]
RewriteRule ^([A-Za-z0-9\-]+)/([0-9]+)(/)?$ Pages/archives.php?cat_id=$2 [NC,L] 
RewriteRule ^archives/mon/([0-9]+)/yr/([0-9]+)(/)?$ Pages/archives.php?mon=$1&yr=$2 [NC,L]
RewriteRule ^([A-Za-z0-9\-]+)/([A-Za-z0-9\-]+)/([0-9]+)(/)?$ Pages/article.php?art_id=$3 [NC,L]
RewriteRule ^wedding-venues-catering-rss(/)?$ rss/rss.php [NC,L]
RewriteRule ^Page-Error(/)?$ Pages/errorPage.php [NC,L]
ErrorDocument 404 http://www.domain.com/wedding-venues-and-caterers-news/Page-Error
ErrorDocument 401 http://www.domain.com/wedding-venues-and-caterers-news/Page-Error
ErrorDocument 403 http://www.domain.com/wedding-venues-and-caterers-news/Page-Error
ErrorDocument 404 http://www.domain.com/wedding-venues-and-caterers-news/Page-Error
ErrorDocument 500 http://www.domain.com/wedding-venues-and-caterers-news/Page-Error

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I also tried to reference the rewrites with absolute URL’s, this worked of course, but they were just redirecting instead of rewriting as you might expect.

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EDIT – This is the other .htaccess file in the root directory, which is part of their existing site.

#Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
rewritecond %{http_host} ^domain.com [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [r=301,nc] 

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine on
redirect 301 /Cavendish.htm http://www.domain.com/
redirect 301 /grange.htm http://www.domain.com/
redirect 301 /restaurant/index.html http://www.domain.com/
redirect 301 /news/Save-money-by-booking-wedding-venues-in-Middlesex-at-off-peak-times.asp http://www.domain.com/
redirect 301 /news/default.asp http://www.domain.com/

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EDIT – I thought this might be relevant.

The 404 error on the rewrite shows this path –

 /l/i/domain.com/public/wedding-venues-and-caterers-news/Pages/news.php

But.. if I edit news.php and request SCRIPT_FILENAME it gives me the path..

 /services/webpages/l/i/domain.com/public/wedding-venues-and-caterers-news/Pages/news.php

My guess is that something is affecting the default path.

Furthermore I have tried basic rewrites at root level, but these also 404.

Answer 1

Finally the issue has been solved.

As the server is hosted with BT Business I decided to email them to see if they could help.

A guy replied saying he had logged in to the server and modified the .htaccess and it now works fine.

He simply added the subfolder in front of the rewritten URL’s.

IE:-

RewriteRule ^$ Pages/news.php  

Became: –

RewriteRule ^$ wedding-venues-and-caterers-news/Pages/news.php

I am still unsure why the subdirectory is needed when the .htaccess file is inside that directory, my guess is it is something to do with their server settings.