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.
How to rewrite/redirect a folder name with .htaccess
-
I have a folder in my site that I want to rename. I don’t want to just rewrite the URL and keep my old folder name, I want to change the folder name and then do whatever is necessary with .hataccess to not lose search engine rankings. The folder name I want to change has a space in it and also is misspelled (whoops x2)
Example.
Mysite.com/old foldr/page.html
Mysite.com/newfolder/page.html
How would I go about doing this with .htaccess? Do I just switch the folder name on my server and then set up a redirect, or do I do a rewrite? Sorry now familiar with the terms or .htacces.
Thanks all
-
You might possibly have to detail the white-space explicitly with \s
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^old\sfoldr/(.*) /newfolder/$1 [R=301,NC,L] -
Yes, Bradley's method will allow you to redirect everything in the folder. I thought you were just needing to re-index one file.
-
Ok thank you! Unfortunately there are LOTS of .html files within this folder, is there a way to just switch the folder name and not each individual file?
-
To 301 redirect all files in the direct to the new directory in .htaccess, try this:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^old\ foldr/(.*) /newfolder/$1 [R=301,NC,L]This should redirect all HTML pages, images, you name it. It should also account for the space too.
You'll want to move all your files to the new folder location so when the redirect happens your end user doesn't receive a 404 error.
-
Yes, you will want to create a 301 redirect from the older location to the newer location.
Steps to take:
1. Change the folder on your server from /old foldr/ --> /newfolder/
2. Add this line in your .htaccess file:
redirect 301 /old%20foldr/page.html http://www.mysite.com/newfolder/page.html
**3. Make sure this is working properly. ** I like to use this 301 redirect checker tool:
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
-
Should I Redirect Pagination?
Working on a redirect map for a client moving platforms and they have all of their category pagination indexed - no canonical link and no rel next/prev's on any of them. Should I redirect the pagination pages to the main category page on the new platform? Or Should I allow the pagination to de-index itself type of thing? Thoughts and experience?
Web Design | | paul-bold0 -
Spanish website indexed in English, redirect to spanish or english version if i do a new website design?
Hi MOZ users, i have this problem. We have a website in Spanish Language but Google crawls it on English (it is not important the reasons). We re made the entire website and now we are planning the move. The new website will have different language versions, english, spanish and portuguese. Somebody tells me that we have to redirect the old urls (crawled on english) to the new english versions, not to the spanish (the real language of the firsts). Example: URL1 Language: Spanish - Crawled on English --> redirect to Language English version. the other option will be redirect to the spanish new version, which the visitor is waiting to find. URL1 Language: Spanish - Crawled on English --> redirect to Language Spanish version. What do you think? Which is the better option?
Web Design | | NachoRetta0 -
301 Redirect all pictures when moving to a new site?
We have 30,000 pictures on our site. Moz will return 404's on some occasionally, but Google seems to ignore those. Should I 301 redirect all those images when we move to a new site lay-out? Appreciate your views!
Web Design | | Discountvc0 -
Do I need to 301 redirect www.domain.com/index.html to www.domain.com/ ?
So, interestingly enough, the Moz crawler picked up my index.html file (homepage) and reported duplicate content, of course. But, Google hasn't seemed to index the www.domain.com/index.html version of my homepage, just the www.domain.com version. However, it looks like I do have links going specifically to www.domain.com/index.html and I want to make sure those are getting counted towards my overall domain strength. Is it necessary to 301 redirect in the scenario described above?
Web Design | | Small_Business_SEO0 -
Privacy Policy: index it/? And where to place it?
Hi Everyone, Two questions, first: should you allow google to index your privacy policy? Second: for a service based site (not e-commerce, not selling anything) should you put the policy in the footer so it's site wide or just on the "contact us" form page? Best, Ruben
Web Design | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
Is it bad to have /index.php at the end of a uri?
Is it bad for SEO if traffic is directed to "http://www.example.com/someuri/index.php" instead of "http://www.example.com/someuri/" and would it be works setting up a redirect rule at htaccess level?
Web Design | | NoisyLittleMonkey1 -
Is it better to redirect a url or set up a landing page for a new site?
Hi, One of our clients has got a new website but is still getting quite a lot of traffic to her old site which has a page authority of 30 on the home page and has about 20 external backlinks. It's on a different hosting package so a different C block but I was wondering if anyone could advise if it would be better to simply redirect this page to the new site or set up a landing page on this domain simply saying "Site has moved, you can now find us here..." sort of idea. Any advice would be much appreciated Thanks
Web Design | | Will_Craig0 -
Parked Domain or Redirect
Should I park a domain or Redirect? And what is the best way? I need to switch our domain name. I currently have all of our domains redirecting to our main website. I have set up there own hosting in our cpanel account so I could redirect them to our main domain. Was this too many steps? I tried putting all of our domains in our main domains, .htaccess file, and redirected them to our main website, but they did not work. So that is why I set up there own cpanel accounts. Now they work fine. However, my hosting company told me that I could just park the domain on our current domains account. If I can redirect all of these domain in one place, that would be great. I thought that a parked domain is considered duplicate websites, as both urls work, displaying the entire website with both urls. So Would I have to re upload our entire website to the account that I want as our main domain? Or is there another way of going about doing this?
Web Design | | hfranz0