Comments on: htaccess syntax woes

Question: htaccess syntax woes

sindark — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 14:10:52 -0800

I need to add a few lines to my htaccess file to deal with the fact that Google Image Search never updates its database One of the most common ways people find my blog is through Google Image Search. It has taken the keywords used to tag my images, as well as the pagerank of the site, and made me a prominent hit for many search terms. The trouble is, when I moved to WordPress, I broke all the links. They have not yet grown back.

Most of the hits are for archive pages for the old blog. For example, someone looking for photos of Oxford might be sent to:

http://www.sindark.com/archive/2006_01_01_sibilant_archive.html

Now, that page still exists. It is at:

http://www.sindark.com/blogger/archive/2006_01_01_sibilant_archive.html

Ideally, the person should be sent to the new post page in the WordPress architecture, but sending them to the new location of the Blogger archive page is better than dumping them into a 404 File Not Found screen.

How can I edit my htaccess file so that anyone looking for:

Xyear_Xmonth_Xday_sibilant_archive.html

will be sent to

/blogger/archive/Xyear_Xmonth_Xday_sibilant_archive.html

Of course, this is a temporary fix until Google finally understands the new architecture of my site.

A cleaner explanation of this is on my blog (SELF LINK!).

By: hatsix

hatsix — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 14:27:12 -0800

RewriteRule ^archive/([A-Za-z0-9-]+) blogger/archive/$1

try that on for size...

for reference, there is a wonderful mod_rewrite cheat sheet at ILoveJackDaniels.com

By: sindark

sindark — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 14:42:19 -0800

That doesn't seem to work. Trying to go to:

http://www.sindark.com/archive/2005_12_01_sibilant_archive.html

still leads to a 404 screen.

By: RustyBrooks

RustyBrooks — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 15:03:26 -0800

Uh, does the RewriteRule go in htaccess or the apache conf file?

By: hatsix

hatsix — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 15:29:12 -0800

in the .htaccess...

seems like you have it working now! (at least, it works for me!)

By: hatsix

hatsix — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 15:34:19 -0800

p.s. the reason the URLs above don't work is because of the date... you didn't post anything on Jan 01...

The url you posted in the comment:
http://www.sindark.com/archive/2005_12_01_sibilant_archive.html

works fine for me... the other URLS don't work

p.s. there should already be a rule in the htaccess for pretty URLs... you should be able to dupe this to get the rules you need.

By: sindark

sindark — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 15:34:49 -0800

hatsix,

I reverted to an old version that only fixes a single photo - the one of Tallinn at night. For all others, it is broken.

By: hatsix

hatsix — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 15:38:51 -0800

yeah, scratch my comments about it working...

By: sindark

sindark — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 15:47:28 -0800

For the reference of anyone looking around, the htaccess file is set now to the place it was at when I posted this question.

By: cheaily

cheaily — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 16:14:50 -0800

Try this in your .htaccess file

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^archive/([A-Za-z0-9_.]+) blogger/archive/$1

if you've already got a line with RewriteEngine on, you don't need to have it again.

By: fishfucker

fishfucker — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 16:42:34 -0800

A couple of additions that couldn't hurt:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^archive/([A-Za-z0-9]+)\.html blogger/archive/$1\.html [NC,L]

(the [NC,L] should be on the same line as the rewrite rule).

If it doesn't work, you'll want to look at your apache error logs to see where it is going.*

Another option if you *don't* want to use mod_rewrite, is to soft-link /archives to blogger/archives and then make sure apache follows symlinks by putting 'Options +FollowSymlinks' in the .htaccess.

* I pulled the _. and added the .html because I wasn't sure exactly how that was supposed to escape in the [A-Za-z0-9_.]) Anybody want to elaborate how that syntax is supposed to work?

By: sindark

sindark — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 17:23:45 -0800

"Anybody want to elaborate how that syntax is supposed to work? "

It sure isn't intuitive, is it?

By: rampy

rampy — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 07:19:56 -0800

let me know how you make out with this...

Wordpress's new system of doing rewriting internally instead of writing the rules to the .htaccess file directly has been giving me fits when trying to make custom rules for old content (similiar situation to yours).

By: malevolent

malevolent — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 08:33:40 -0800

Try using a permanent redirect rather than just rewriting. How about something like this as the first rewrite rule in .htaccess?

RewriteRule ^archive/([0-9]{4}_[0-9]{2}_[0-9]{2}_[a-z0-9_-]+\.html)$ /blogger/archive/$1 [R=301,L]

(I've not checked or tested that so there may be mistakes)

By: cheaily

cheaily — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 20:15:54 -0800

* I pulled the _. and added the .html because I wasn't sure exactly how that was supposed to escape in the [A-Za-z0-9_.]) Anybody want to elaborate how that syntax is supposed to work?

inside a character class block (ie, []), the full-stop loses it's status as a metacharacter, and simply matches a full-stop.

By: fishfucker

fishfucker — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 20:31:05 -0800

oh. thx.

By: sindark

sindark — Sun, 24 Sep 2006 13:56:57 -0800

malevolent,

Thanks a lot. I added that to my htaccess file, and it seems to be working.

I will post here again if I discover some strange and terrible error.