301 .htaccess Redirect Trick
September 15th, 2006 Filed in: Tricks & Tips Jump to commentsAfter the implementation of WordPress, you should notice some of the URLs and paths on this site are different. To prevent getting 404 File Not Found error (traffic coming from links, bookmarks and search engines), I used this .htaccess 301 redirect trick I found. This way is better than meta refresh or redirect tag because there is no delay as the browser reads the .htaccess file first. However, it is only available to Linux server (doen’t work on Window server). Here is the trick.
Go to your site’s root folder, download the .htaccess file to your local computer and edit it with a plain-text editor (Notepad). If you are using FTP Client software and you don’t see any .htaccess file on your server, double check your setting and make sure you have turn on invisible / system files.
To redirect certain page(s):
Redirect 301 /oldpage.html http://www.yoursite.com/newpage.html
Redirect 301 /oldpage2.html http://www.yoursite.com/folder/
To redirect entire site:
Redirect 301 / http://www.new-site.com/
May 13th, 2008 at 12:40 am
I am glad I found this, momentary brainfreeze after sending out a mass mailing for a client site that had a + at the end of a link, which the server didn’t know to just strip off - YIKES!
A quick .htaccess search and I came across a few overly complex solutions, yours was the most effective!
Thanks a ton.
February 24th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
Maybe you should use this code if you move your whole site:
Redirect Permanent 301 / http://www.new-site.com/
January 9th, 2008 at 7:59 am
I’m experienced in SEO.
I can tell you that this
::Redirect 301 / http://www.new-site.com/
Is a bad way to redirect your site. You should use this code.
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule (.*) http://z.com/$1[R=301,L]
December 21st, 2007 at 12:01 pm
Thank-you - Ideal information for me after renaming a page on my site :-)
November 18th, 2007 at 9:19 pm
Hi, wondering if i could use somthing like this to redirect all my Zip and rar files to my main page ? any info will be great thanks in advance.
September 15th, 2007 at 12:32 am
2 minor mistakes in this tutorial:
The server reads the .htaccess file, not the client (browser).
And yes this trick will work under windows with Apache.
July 12th, 2007 at 5:00 am
That helped me
June 5th, 2007 at 5:01 am
“the browser reads the .htaccess file first”
No browser can read a .htaccess file on a proper apache installation because they are never delivered out.
.htacces files only are holding some server settings which are inherited in all subfolders of the containing one.
So how does it redirect? The server makes a internal redirect, a kind of alias..
May 23rd, 2007 at 8:45 am
Thanks!
May 22nd, 2007 at 6:56 am
Great info Thanks, should help PR leaks