Bad code on Learn Seo Redirection info Page

[squareplug]

Is it just me, or is the Redirection resource page missing the exclamation point (!) in this code. If so, this could really mess someone's site up if they copy and paste.

http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/redirection

http://screencast.com/t/n7lknZ32G9xF

Redirecting Canonical Hostnames: The original developers at SEOmoz needed to redirect any requests that do not start with www.seomoz.org to make sure they included the www. They did this not only because it looks better, but to avoid common canonicalization errors. Redirect: http://seomoz.org/To: http://www.seomoz.org/ Redirect: http://mail.seomoz.org/To: http://www.seomoz.org Redirect: http://seomoz.org/somefile.phpTo: http://www.seomoz.org/somefile.php Solution: Add the following directive: RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^seomoz.org [NC]RewriteRule (.*) http://www.seomoz.org/$1 [L,R=301] Explanation: This directive tells apache to examine the host the visitor is accessing (in this case: seomoz.org), and if it does not equal www.seomoz.org redirect  to www.seomoz.org. The exclamation point (!) in front of www.seomoz.org negates the comparison, saying “if the host IS NOT www.seomoz.org, then perform RewriteRule.” In our case RewriteRule redirects them to www.seomoz.org while preserving the exact file they were accessing in a back-reference.

*emphasis added by me

[squareplug]

I think I'm becoming anal retentive. Just today, I took the time to contact two "seo" companies with linked articles from the Learn Seo page to let them know that they might want to redirect their broken links! I can't imagine having a link like that and letting it just crumble in to little 1s and 0s, not to mention I didn't get the info I was wanting. I'm sure they'll think I'm nuts. I then start thinking to myself, "self, you might know a thing or two" and then another robot and his tag issue come whack me back in my place...

thanks for the confirmation Cyrus. I just found out there's a support forum for this kind of thing..probably a better place for these  issues.

[Cyrus-Shepard]

Hi Holly,

Good catch. The code should look like:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.seomoz.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [R,L]

Explanation:

This directive tells apache to examine the host the visitor is accessing. If it does not equal www.seomoz.org, redirect  to www.seomoz.org. The exclamation point (!) in front of ^www.seomoz.org negates the comparison, saying “if the host IS NOT www.seomoz.org, then perform RewriteRule.” In our case RewriteRule redirects them to www.seomoz.org while preserving the exact file they were accessing in a back-reference.

I'll send a note to our help team to get this fixed.

Thanks!