A script to automatically write 301 redirect rules to htaccess?
-
I was wondering if anyone could help provide some resources on how to automatically write 301 redirect rules to htaccess. Allow me to explain...
I'm building a new website and the primary users are businesses. They have their own profile pages on the site.
The URL is based off of their Company Name.
In the event that they decided to change their name... reasons being, perhaps they mispelled it the first time, or they're removing LLC or adding Inc, I want to also change the URL and redirect the old URL to the new URL.
Since the URL is based off of their Company Name, making a change to the company name would make a change to the URL. I know it doesn't have to work this way, but for our purpose this works best.
In case the old URL had any links to it, I wanted to see if there was an way to automatically update an htaccess file with a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new one.
Could anyone point me in the right direction of how to do this? Perhaps a sample script. I've done a lot of searches on Google and can't seem to find anything.
e.g.
Original:
Name: XYZ Widgets
URL: website.com/xyz-widgetsNew - business changes their company name in their profile:
Name: XYZ Widgets, Inc.
URL: website.com/xyz-widgets-incUpon the user saving the changes in their profile, I'd like to write a 301 redirect to an htaccess file:
Redirect 301 /xyz-widgets http://www.website.com/xyz-widgets-incI know how to manually write redirects and I've got a pretty smart web developer. We've just never triggered a script to automatically write to an htaccess file before.
Is this possible? Any resources are appreciated. Any security risks?
Thanks!
-
The rewrite done by WP is a 301.
-
Thanks for the reply. I've seen WordPress and Joomla do this before. But we don't use a CMS. It's a custom PHP framework. Although in my research I read that WP does a rewrite but not a 301 redirect. Not sure. WP has so many plugins so maybe there is one for redirecting changed file names. I'm sure between htaccess and a DB table we can do it. We'll definitely give it a try. I was just hoping to find an example of this online that I could view first.
-
So, what CMS are you using ?
I was in the same situation with one site. Luckily I was using Wordpress/Custom Posts. A change to a slug automatically creates a 301 redirect from the old url to the new url. There's even plugins that extend to allow the creation of the redirect even when changing the title. The 301 redirects don't actually go into htaccess, but they are handled by Wordpress and stored in the database. Another reason why if wordpress were a woman, I'd want to have babies with her.
Do some searching and see if there's a similar extension/plugin or something you can do to have that functionality within your CMS. If its custom, get your programmer to code it.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Resolving 301 Redirect Chains from Different URL Versions (http, https, www, non-www)
Hi all, Our website has undergone both a redesign (with new URLs) and a migration to HTTPS in recent years. I'm having difficulties ensuring all URLs redirect to the correct version all the while preventing redirect chains. Right now everything is redirecting to the correct version but it usually takes up to two redirects to make this happen. See below for an example. How do I go about addressing this, or is this not even something I should concern myself with? Redirects (2) <colgroup><col width="123"><col width="302"></colgroup>
Technical SEO | | theyoungfirm
| Redirect Type | URL |
| | http://www.theyoungfirm.com/blog/2009/index.html 301 | https://theyoungfirm.com/blog/2009/index.html 301 | https://theyoungfirm.com/blog/ | This code below was what we added to our htaccess file. Prior to adding this, the various subdomain versions (www, non-www, http, etc.) were not redirecting properly. But ever since we added it, it's now created these additional URLs (see bolded URL above) as a middle step before resolving to the correct URL. RewriteEngine on RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.(.*)$ [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://%1/$1 [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !on RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L] Your feedback is much appreciated. Thanks in advance for your help. Sincerely, Bethany0 -
301 Redirects, Sitemaps and Indexing - How to hide redirected urls from search engines?
We have several pages in our site like this one, http://www.spectralink.com/solutions, which redirect to deeper page, http://www.spectralink.com/solutions/work-smarter-not-harder. Both urls are listed in the sitemap and both pages are being indexed. Should we remove those redirecting pages from the site map? Should we prevent the redirecting url from being indexed? If so, what's the best way to do that?
Technical SEO | | HeroDesignStudio0 -
Redirect 301 & Wild Cards
Afternoon All! Question, I am having trouble getting my head around redirects and I am wondering if someone could help me on this.... We recently changed our website and although were using the same database, were using a different URL structure. So for example... Old URL siteurl.com/products/product/moredetails/merlin.id1553.html
Technical SEO | | scottiedog
New URL siteurl.com//vertigo/dl/product.php?p=1553 As you can see the product has the same ID number, just in a different directory. What I'd like to happen is.... If you go too siteurl.com////.idXXXX.html then you are 301'd too siteurl.com//vertigo/do/product.php?p=XXXX Obviously XXXX is the ID number of the product in our database. Any thoughts? I need help! Thanks in advance.0 -
301 redirects - an ongoing argument in our agency
ok fellow marketers. we have an on-going argument in our office regarding 301 redirects. for seo best practices, should a 301 be done at the registrar level or in the htaccess file. We have arguments going both ways and I'd love to hear what everyone has to say about it. Thanks, Stephan
Technical SEO | | Stephan_Boehringer0 -
How to verify a page-by-page level 301 redirect was done correctly?
Hello, I told some tech guys to do a page-by-page relevant 301 redirect (as talked about in Matt Cutts video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1lVPrYoBkA) when a company wanted to move to a new domain when their site was getting redesigned. I found out they did a 302 redirect on accident and had to fix that, so now I don't trust they did the page-by-page relevant redirect. I have a feeling they just redirected all of the pages on the old domain to the homepage of the new domain. How could I confirm this suspicion? I run the old domain through screaming frog and it only shows 1 URL - the homepage. Does that mean they took all of the pages on the old domain offline? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | EvolveCreative0 -
How many steps for a 301 redirect becomes a "bad thing"
OK, so I am not going to worry now about being a purist with the htaccess file, I can't seem to redirect the old pages without redirect errors (project is an old WordPress site to a redesigned WP site). And the new site has a new domain name; and none of the pages (except the blog posts) are the same. I installed the Simple 301 redirects plugin on old site and it's working (the Redirection plugin looks very promising too, but I got a warning it may not be compatible with the old non-supported theme and older v. of WP). Now my question using one of the redirect examples (and I need to know this for my client, who is an internet marketing consultant so this is going to be very important to them!): Using Redirect Checker, I see that http://creativemindsearchmarketing.com/blog --- 301 redirects to http://www.creativemindsearchmarketing.com/blog --- which then 301 redirects to final permanent location of http//www.cmsearchmarketing.com/blog How is Google going to perceive this 2-step process? And is there any way to get the "non-www-old-address" and also the "www-old-address" to both redirect to final permanent location without going through this 2-stepper? Any help is much appreciated. _Cindy
Technical SEO | | CeCeBar0 -
301 redirecting some pages directly, and the rest to a single page
I've read through the Redirect guide here already but can't get this down in my .htaccess I want to redirect some pages specifically (/contactinfo.html to the new /contact.php) And I want all other pages (not all have equivalent pages on the new site) to redirect to my new (index.php) homepage. How can I set it up so that some specific pages redirect directly, and all others go to one page? I already have the specific oldpage.html -> newpage.php redirects in place, just need to figure out the broad one for everything else.
Technical SEO | | RyanWhitney150 -
301 Redirect vs Domain Alias
We have hundreds of domains which are either alternate spelling of our primary domain or close keyword names we didn't want our competitor to get before us. The primary domain is running on a dedicated Windows server running IIS6 and set to a static IP. Since it is a static IP and not using host headers any domain pointed to the static IP will immediately show the contents of the site, however the domain will be whatever was typed. Which could be the primary domain or an alias. Two concerns. First, is it possible that Google would penalize us for the alias domains or dilute our primary domain "juice"? Second, we need to properly track traffic from the alias domains. We could make unique content for those performing well and sell or let expire those that are sending no traffic. It's not my goal to use the alias domains to artificially pump up our primary domain. We have them for spelling errors and direct traffic. What is the best practice for handling one or both of these issues?
Technical SEO | | briankb0