Urls rewriting "how to" with .htaccess
-
hi,
Please i would need advices (links, tips, tool:generator ?) regarding url rewriting through .htaccess (newbee about it).
It's a "refurbishing" website case , the domain doesn't change. But the CMS does !
I've got a list of urls (800) with which i don't want to loose rankings on :
Here the type of old url syntax :
http://www.mydomain.com/home/newscontent.asp?id=1133
Here the new url type would be:
http://www.mydomain.com/name-of-the-article
or/and
http://www.mydomain.com/category/Page-2Tks a lot...
-
You should get all the url of the old site with Xenu's Link Sleuth, then create a PHP array of oldUrl => newUrl and put it in your redirect script.
So you have in the htaccess :
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/home/newscontent.asp
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} id=([0-9]+)
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ redirect.php?id=%1 [L]In the redirect.php file, you have :
$redirect = array("/home/newscontent.asp?id=1133" => "/name-of-the-article"); // 800 times (for all url)
if(isset($redirect[$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']])) {
header("Status: 301 Moved Permanently", false, 301);
header("Location: http://www.mydomain.com/".$redirect[$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']]);
exit();
}// Send a 404 if you don't have a redirect
-
Hi, i was thinking of the whole picture of baptiste solution, you say :
"Baptiste: On the new linux hosting set up an .htaccess file in the root of the site directory that redirects all id=xxxx requests to a redirect.php file on your server. The redirect.php file will need to interrogate a database with a table of the mappings and automatically redirect to the correct page via php scripting."
it means that wiithout any credentials, any database access, if you have urls from the site you need to move to, you can redirect any urls site to another one !?
Hum..i think i miss something ..
-
Good idea..i'll to make it so , and use excel function.....tks
-
Many tks for all these explanations..
So, in fact, lazily speaking, i would say that the .htaccess file solution give less work to do (no redirection script) and seems to be quite easy to make (excepting syntax inside .htaccess), so i 'll go for Damien's ..but i need credentials to install it.
Otherwise, if i don't, I'd go for Baptiste's...
Tks a lot...
-
As you have only 800 urls, I agree with Damien, you should generate an associative array in pure php, associating every ID with the new url.
The redirect script will only test if the ID is an array key, if it is you 301 to the new url. Otherwise, display a 404 page.
-
OK in that case it simplifies things a bit.
In order to do any redirection from id=1136 to unique-article-name you will haveto create the mappings entirely manually.
The two solutions provided are:
Baptiste: On the new linux hosting set up an .htaccess file in the root of the site directory that redirects all id=xxxx requests to a redirect.php file on your server. The redirect.php file will need to interrogate a database with a table of the mappings and automatically redirect to the correct page via php scripting.Mine: essentially the same as Baptiste's proposal, except that you don't interrogate the database, all the redirections are done using the htaccess file which contains all the mappings.
Either way you will need to manually create the mappings yourself, either in the database or in the htaccess file.
EDIT: Just had a thought, are the page titles of the articles the same between the new site and the old? If they are then you could crawl both sites with Xenu and then use vlookups in excel (or similar) to semi-automatically create your mapping of id = unique-article-name.
-
I'd say yes for the first one and for sure no for the second one...:)
-
To be honest, this is the solution I'd go for.
Mozollo, was your old site database driven?
Are you using the old article titles as the new page names?
If the answer is no to either of these, then the end result is you will have to manual map id to page name for each of the 800 pages you want to keep.
-
Tks again, so (sorry to repeat)
-
your solution : 1 .htaccess + redirect.php : located at the root of windows platform
-
Damien's : 1 .htaccess :located at the root of windows platform
Is that correct ?
-
-
1. .htaccess won't exist on the windows platform unless you installed a rewrite mod on the windows server. If you did then the .htaccesswill be in the root folder of the website (usually) you should check the documentation of the rewrite mod to confirm that.
2. If you have a windows PC then Xenu's Link Sleuth should be able to crawl the old site, you can then extract the information from the files that xenu can export.
3/4. If every unique id needs to get mapped to a unique url then yes, 800 times it is. If you have multiple ids that go to the same page you could do:
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^id=113[3-8]$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^newscontent.asp$ ^name-of-the-article$ [L,R=301]
All ids from 1133 to 1138 will now redirect to the same page, you'll have to work out the regexs though.
-
To be clear about the different roles of the files in my solution, the .htaccess file will redirect every old url (whatever the id is) to a redirect script written in php.
This script will get the old url Id, load the article (to get the article name) and then redirect 301 to the new url. Only in php can you access the database.
Damien gave another solution, only based on htaccess. You have to write (or generate with code / software) 800 redirect directive for the htaccess file.
-
Tks to you both Baptiste placé Damiens Phillips and.
What do you mean when you say :
"The redirect.php file will load the article (or category as I understood) and do a 301 to the new url."
Is it en .htaccess file to create or a dedicated file.php , or both (redirect.php) ?
Yes, i'll all have to transfer each old article and i'll give them an unique urls per article..hope that reply your question !
-
Can you be a bit more precise about the new url ? Does every old article with id has to 301 to a page with a unique name ?
-
Hi,
Tks to you both Damiens Phillips and Baptiste placé.
But it seems to be a bit confusing for me for 2 reasons : language + technical knowledge !
I confirm that i'll move from windows platform to linux one.So if i understand :
1/ - htaccess is possible but where will it be located ? I assume at the root of the old platform (windows here..).
2/ - I'll have to crawl each article in order to get each id (by the way, have you got any crawler tool to advise ?)
3/ - For each of these urls i'll have to write such syntax :
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^id=1133$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^newscontent.asp$ ^name-of-the-article$ [L,R=301]4/ ...800 times ? Or is there a way to tell on 1 line like :
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^id=1133$ + ^id=1134$ + ^id=1197$ ...... [NC]Tks a lot again
-
I'll return the favour if it turns out he has moved from IIS
-
That's right but htaccess was asked. Thumbed up your answer so it goes first
-
But only if he's moved from Windows IIS hosting to Linux or Windows + PHP!
-
True ! The good syntax is :
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/home/newscontent.asp
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} id=([0-9]+)
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ redirect.php?id=%1 [L] -
He'll need to add [L,R=301] at the end instead of just [L]. IIRC default behaviour is a 302 redirect.
You also can't reference a querystring in the RewriteRule, you have to use RewriteCond.
-
Hi,
From the .asp in the sample URLs I'm guessing you're hosted on Windows, if that's the case you'll need to get a rewrite mod for IIS such as ISAPI Rewrite 3. We've been using it for about 5 years now and it performs well. Their site has documentation that shows how it works.
You'll need to learn about regex expressions and a tool like Regex Buddy might be helpful.
I'm not aware of an tools that can automate generation, and I think that in your case you're going to need to do some manual work to set it up.
First you'll need a way of linking the old URLs to the new ones. Given the information you've provided, it's not clear how you'll be able to do this, so I'll make an assumption.
Assuming that name-of-the-article is the same as the title of newscontent.asp?id=1133, you'll need to generate a list, in excel for example, that lists the old contentid and the title of that document. You can then use formulae/macros to generate the rewrite rules which you would enter in the .htaccess file.
If you don't have a record of the id = title relationship in your old cms database (assumption!) then you might be able to do it by crawling the old site with a crawling program, exporting the data and then manipulating it. Otherwise you'll have to do it all by hand.
Rewrite rules generally take the form:
RewriteRule oldpageaddress newpageaddress [flags]
You'll also need to use the RewriteCond in order to base the rule on the querystring.
So for your example;
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^id=1133$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^newscontent.asp$ ^name-of-the-article$ [L,R=301]
You'd then need to repeat those two statements for each page you want to redirect.
-
Hi mozllo,
You won't be able to create a .htaccess for such urls, because the original url only has the ID of the article and you want the name of the article in the new url. This requires database access to know the new url.
I would suggest to put in your htaccess file :
RewriteRule ^home/newscotnent.asp?id=([0-9]+) redirect.php?id=$1 [L]
Edit : see good rule below
The redirect.php file will load the article (or category as I understood) and do a 301 to the new url.
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
-
Will massive "sculpting" make a difference?
I'm working with a very popular blog that also is associated with related products we manufacture and sell ourselves. The blog is about 99% blog content and about 1% product content. If suddenly some 99% of a 5,000 page blog is changed to have the blog pages no-indexed, will the linkjuice be now more concentrated on the remaining 1%? Also, be aware that this blog has lots of high quality backlinks from everyday recognizable magazines, newspapers and blogs. Of course, this is a highly competitive market place so I'm trying to leave no-stone-unturned here in working out the kinks. In the old days, we sort-of-called this "pagerank sculpting" and the idea was to focus the linkjuce on certain pages and defocus it on other pages. It made sense to block certain pages that were not indexible but Google supposedly dinged that tactic years ago, and today people say this is act also helps as it conserves the crawl budget. Might this make a difference these days?? Keep in mind that the 4,950 remaining pages are still followed, and all backlinks remain in place. Will the site start ranking better for the keywords on the 50 indexed (product) pages?
Link Building | | seo_plus1 -
Backlinks to an anchor name URL: How Google sees them
I have been searching for the answer to this question and to my surprise have yet to find anything on the web. This is my situation: I have a form at the bottom of one of my pages and have another website that wants to link to this page, more specifically this form. I have an anchor link on the page to this form already. I was planning on sending the anchor name URL to the Webmaster to link to my page so their users will go straight to my form. My question is: do I lose link juice to my URL from this link because it is an anchor name URL? Does Google see this link that goes to a specific portion of my page to be less valuable than if I just linked to the plain URL? Cheers Sean
Link Building | | Tyler1232 -
Does a text URL (without hyperlink) provide any SEO value?
Our clients use the link shortener of our service software to share their job offers. Sometime the job baords they post to do not allow hyperlink and thus post the url as text only. Do these url texts offer any benfits in terms of SEO?
Link Building | | rflores0 -
Does the ratio of external nofollow links to external "do follow" links matter in terms of SERPs ranking?
My site has an external link nofollow:dofollow ratio of approximately 1:1 That is, there are about as many nofollow external links as "do follow" external links. I have an impression that the ratio of no-follow to "do follow" links is a factor in the way that our website shows up in SERPs. I have the impression from reading a variety of sources, and from looking at Seomoz, that calculate "trust" factors as if they mattered (in SERPs), that seem to value a relatively low nofollow:dofollow ratio. Am I correct about that? Thanks,
Link Building | | tcolling
Tim PS - I don't know whether or not this matters, but our website is at: www.trustworthycare.com - Tim0 -
Bloggers "no_follow"
Hi Guy's, We have been sending bloggers products to review and in return we ask for a link back to our website to the relevant product. As I now understand it, Google is no longer giving this any weight & bloggers are being advised to use the "no follow" tag. So have I understood the new rules correctly? If so is it worth us continuing to send bloggers products to review? Thanks Daniel
Link Building | | LushDuck0 -
Best Way To Gain Some Quick Naked URL Backlinks.
Hi, Im looking to build as many naked URL backlinks in order to diversify my link profile more, I have alot of anchor text backlinks and I see alot of people getting punished for having alot of anchors texts and not many basic URL links. Any suggestions on how to get alot of these as soon as possible?
Link Building | | Prestige-SEO0 -
Creating new url structure for inbound links
In an effort to make is easier for our clients to link to content on our site we intend on creating a simpler url structure for them: site.com/1234 will 301 to site.com/xyz/abc/1234-this-is-where-we-want-you Is there a danger of creating new 301's just for this purpose, the goal here is to make it easier for clients to link to content and thus garner more inbound links.
Link Building | | antiquesearcher0 -
Set a desination url to text that did not have it previously
I have the following question. Is it OK to set a desination url to text that did not have it previously? Can it cause SEO (SERP) issues? For example, I have this sentence: The tool you're using is great, but this template will help you. Say, the "this template" text has been just plain text for like a year. And now I want to add a certain destination url to the "this template" phrase. So, can it cause some SEO issues to me or not?
Link Building | | VinceWicks0