cannot get 301 redirect to function

geoman · 01-17-2006, 05:57 PM

Hello all. My site is hosted on a Linux server running Apache. I am trying to use a 301 redirect in my .htacess file to go from non www to the www version of my domain. I have this in my .htaccess file...

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mydomainDOTcom [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://wwwDOTmydomainDOTcom/$1 [L,R=301]

Of course DOT is swapped in to get this message to post.

Unfortunately it doesn't work. My host said mod_rewrite is on. How can I tell if the .htaccess file is being run? Are there any other files that I need to modify to get .htacess to run the 301 redirect? The host is running Apache.

Any tips will be appreciated.

bulliver · 01-17-2006, 06:14 PM

Quote:

in my .htacess file to do from non www to the www version of my domain

I don't understand this. Are you saying you want:
http://yoursite.com/
to redirect to:
http://www.yoursite.com/
?

Because every browser I have tried serves the same page in this situation anyway...

geoman · 01-17-2006, 06:28 PM

I don't understand this. Are you saying you want:
yoursiteDOTcom
to redirect to:
wwwDOTyoursiteDOTcom

That is exactly what I want to do. The reason is google, not users. When google spiders encounter a link without the www and it visits the page, GG often considered a different page. Inbound links are not credited and sometimes GG duplicate content penalties come into play.

bulliver · 01-17-2006, 06:44 PM

I see. I am no guru at mod_rewrite, but you can check if the .htaccess file and mod_rewrite itself is working by putting this:

Code:

RedirectMatch permanent (.*)search.html$ http://www.google.com

in an .htaccess file. Now if you do a http://yoursite.com/search.html you should be redirected to google.

You get the idea here is to just simplify the rules for now to make sure that it is working, then you can go to work on your regex...

geoman · 01-17-2006, 08:23 PM

Thanks a million bulliver. I put that into my .htaccess and used it to figure out where I could locate the file so that it would run. It also showed mod-rewrite was going and allowoverride was not set to none. Then I edited the file to do the 301 redirect and it worked. I appreciate your help.

In case you are curious, here is the reason for this....

aplawrenceDOTcom/Unixart/googlepagerank301DOThtml

I am new here so I had to swap DOT for .