Question

This seems like exactly what you would want to do with the htaccess rewrite rules. But I can’t seem to get it to work properly.

I have this page on my site: http://wireie.gocactus.com/network_extensions.php

I want to rename it to: http://wireie.gocactus.com/transparent-ethernet-solutions

So this is the line I put in my htaccess file:

RewriteRule ^transparent-ethernet-solutions network_extensions\.php [NC]

Alrighty. Now if I go to /transparent-ethernet-solutions, it works great.

The problem is that, /network_extensions.php also still works great. So I’ll want to rewrite that url with this line:

RewriteRule ^network_extensions\.php*$ /transparent-ethernet-solutions [R,NC]

Now it gives me an error message about too many redirects. If I add the second line without the first line, it changes the URL on the PHP link but gives me a ‘page not found’ error on the pretty link redirection.

My mind is blown. Can I have the URL rewritten without forwarding and have the new URL work without redirecting from the old one? I’m not sure if there’s just some parameter I’m missing in the first line, or some combination of rules necessary.

Answer 1

This is the code that will be needed in your .htaccess:

Options +FollowSymLinks -MultiViews
# Turn mod_rewrite on
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /

RewriteRule ^transparent-ethernet-solutions/?$ network_extensions.php [NC,L]

RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,}\s/+network_extensions\.php\s [NC]
RewriteRule ^ transparent-ethernet-solutions [R=301,L]