Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Infinite Redirect Loop without trailing slash, please help
-
I've been searching for an answer all day, I can't seem to figure this out.
When I Fetch my blog as Google(http://www.mysite.com/blog) WITHOUT a trailing slash at the end, I get this error:
The page seems to redirect to itself. This may result in an infinite redirect loop
**HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently**When I Fetch my blog as Google WITH the trailing slash at the end(http://www.mysite.com/blog/), it is fine without errors.
When I pull it up in a browser comes up fine both with and without the trailing slash.
My .htaccess file in the root directory contains this:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index.htm\ HTTP/
RewriteRule ^index.htm$ http://www.mysite.com/ [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mysite.com$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.mysite.com/$1 [R=301,L]My .htaccess file in the blog directory contains this:
BEGIN WordPress
<ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /blog/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^./index.php/. [NC]
RewriteRule ^index.php/(.*)$ http://www.mysite.com/blog/$1 [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /blog/index.php [L]</ifmodule>END WordPress
Do I have something incorrectly coded in these .htaccess files that could be causing this? Or is there something else I should look at? Thank you for any help!!
-
I combined the htaccess files (putting the blog rewrite rule to the bottom of the file) now having just one htacess in the root directory and unfortunately it did not work. When I tried it, all the links on the blog would not work, they were all "page not found" so I reverted it back to what I originally had... Here is what the combined htaccess file looked like:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index.htm\ HTTP/
RewriteRule ^index.htm$ http://www.example.com/ [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example.com$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]<ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /blog/
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^./index.php/. [NC]
RewriteRule ^index.php/(.*)$ http://www.example.com/blog/$1 [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /blog/index.php [L]</ifmodule>Thanks again for any insight!
-
Hey Debora,
Any luck?
Keith
-
Hello Debora,
Make sure you keep copies of your .htaccess files before you make changes and, if you can, use a test site to test your changes first before you make changes on your live website.
I'm not sure how your website is set up so I don't know if combining the two files will accomplish what you are looking for.
Whatever you do, make sure you have backups.
-
Yes as I said above

-
Thanks for your response Keith, I'll give it a try and let you know!
-
Thanks George. Please forgive me, I am a newbie at this! I took a look at the link you provided, and I don't fully understand what they are explaining. What I did understand is that having 2 htaccess files in different directories caused a problem with their code. Do you think combining the two files into one on the root directory will make a difference for me?
-
Sorry, I completely misread this question (I missed the part where you said you had to .htaccess files!).
Yes put one .htaccess file in the root dir, add the blog rewrite rule to the bottom of the file.
Let me know how it goes.
Keith
-
Thanks Keith. I tried it and it is still looping. Do you think it has something to do with having 2 different .htaccess files? Should I combine them into just one in the root directory?
-
Yuk mod_rewrite...
Try:
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index.php\ HTTP/
RewriteRule ^index.php$ http://www.example.com/blog/ [R=301,L]You may wish to add $1 on the end
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index.php\ HTTP/
RewriteRule ^index.php$ http://www.example.com/blog/$1 [R=301,L]Let me know if that stops it looping...
Keith
-
Try here. Maybe that will help.
Edit: Pretty sure it's your root directory .htaccess file that is causing the looping. I'd start with that.
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
-
How to enable lost trailing slash redirection in WordPress with Yoast plugin
Hi, We have lost the non-slash to slash URL redirection in our WP site. We are using Yoast SEO. All the settings are normal and we have enabled the related code in .htaccess too. Still we couldn't able to find why we lost. Please help. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Should I switch from trailing slash to no trailing slash?
I have a website which has had trailing slashes added to the URLs by 301 redirects for over 3 years. However, the custom CMS does not allow navigation links to have trailing slashes. This is resulting in 301s every time a user clicks a navigation link. The site ranks fairy well for some moderately competitive keywords. If you were in my shoes, would you remove the forced trailing slash redirect in the .htaccess and replace it with a trailing slash removal redirect, or would you leave it like it is? Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ICON_Malta
James p.s. the CMS also doesn't allow canonicals.0 -
Multilingual Site and 301 redirection
Hey there awesome people of Moz I have this site that has many languages in it. The main language is English and my developer did the following www.example.com ( is the main site ) which redirects with a 301 to www.example.com/en if your geo location is supported by our languages then you will automatically be redirected to whatever language you have in your country but does the first language with is english have to 301 redirect to www.example.com/en ? I thought that the right way is to just leave /en at the root file. Thanks in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Angelos_Savvaidis0 -
How do you 301 redirect URLs with a hashbang (#!) format? We just lost a ton of pagerank because we thought javascript redirect was the only way! But other sites have been able to do this – examples and details inside
Hi Moz, Here's more info on our problem, and thanks for reading! We’re trying to Create 301 redirects for 44 pages on site.com. We’re having trouble 301 redirecting these pages, possibly because they are AJAX and have hashbangs in the URLs. These are locations pages. The old locations URLs are in the following format: www.site.com/locations/#!new-york and the new URLs that we want to redirect to are in this format: www.site.com/locations/new-york We have not been able to create these redirects using Yoast WordPress SEO plugin v.1.5.3.2. The CMS is WordPress version 3.9.1 The reason we want to 301 redirect these pages is because we have created new pages to replace them, and we want to pass pagerank from the old pages to the new. A 301 redirect is the ideal way to pass pagerank. Examples of pages that are able to 301 redirect hashbang URLs include http://www.sherrilltree.com/Saddles#!Saddles and https://twitter.com/#!RobOusbey.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DA20130 -
Php 301 redirect
Hi I am migrating an old wordpress site to a custom PHP site and the URL profiles will be different, so want to retain all link profiles and more importantly if a user visits the old urls via search then they are seamlessly transferred to the new equivalent page For example www.domain.com/about-us is going to need to redirect to www.domain.com/aboutus.php www.domain.com/furniture is going to need to redirect to www.domain.com/furniture-collections.php etc What is the best way of achieving this apart from .htaccess as not 100% confident of doing this. Could it be done via PHP or using meta tags?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ocelot0 -
Does a 302 redirect pass penalties?
I'm having problems finding a definitive answer to this question, there is a lot of rumour and gossip out there but nothing I can rely on. I'm working with a site that received an unnatural links notice followed by a massive drop in search traffic. Looking at the link profile it's pretty much jacked beyond repair and I have recommended that we move over to a fresh domain. However, it's an established brand with many more sources of traffic than organic search. There's no way we can burn all their repeat visits, loyal customers, brand recognition that they've built up over the years so I want to redirect from the old domain to the new. This is not to try and make any SEO gain from the previous site, frankly we don't give a crap about that. We just want to maintain the brand. A 302 is a temporary redirect, this will be a permanent move BUT a 301 will pass on the penalty. So can we safely use a 302 redirect in this situation or is there a better alternative (meta refresh?) Thanks for your help! MB.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MattBarker0 -
Primary Domain or Redirect?
We are starting a new travel guide for a resort town. I have bought an expired domain with decent related links and PR (which seems to have survived the transfer (4 months ago). Beofre we launch the new site I am trying to decide if we should use this expired domain as the primary URL for the new site or just do a permanent redirect and buy a new domain that better matches the theme of the site. I am obviously concerned with starting from scatch with a new domain. I am confident we can build some good rellevant links in a short time but this space is very competetive. Any input would be greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Locals0 -
DNS or 301 Website Redirect
We are running a marketplace site, so we have thousands of vendors selling their products on our site. Each vendor has a Profile page and we are soon to launch a premium store-front that is white label. Many of these vendors will want to point a custom url to their premium store-front (which is a sub domain of the marketplace) and we are trying to get an understanding of how we should instruct them to point their url in a way that will give the main marketplace site the seo juice. We also want to understand what will show up in the address bar. Will it be their url or our sub domain? Will any of the marketplace seo juice boost their url local listing status?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bloomnation0