Question

There are several links pointing to a site I manage in which the webmaster mistakenly included a space between the domain name and the page name:

     www.domain.com/ page.html 

When the user clicks, this gives

     www.domain.com/%20page.html 

I’d like to use mod_rewrite to redirect hits to the incorrect address to the correct address, but my rewrite rule is not working. I have tried the following without success:

     rewriterule ^\%20page.html$ /page.html [R=301,L]     rewriterule ^.20page.html$ /page.html [R=301,L] 

How can I write a rule to catch this address? I’d like to keep the PageRank and not be penalized for a broken link, and I can’t get the webmaster to fix his links.

Answer 1

Put the space in your RewriteRule. Probably by the time mod_rewrite sees it, it’s been decoded.