help with RewriteMod

[marcnyc]

Hello,
I need some help writing an .htaccess re-direct.

I would like a URL like this:
http://domain.com/interviews/index.php?interview=Anything
or like this:
http://domain.com/interviews/?interview=Anything
to redirect to a page like this:
http://domain.com/?s=Anything+interview&searchsubmit=

I have come up with this code (the second block of it, the first block was already in my root's .htaccess file):

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress

# BEGIN Interviews
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} /interviews/?interview=(.*)
RewriteRule ^/interviews/(.*) /?s=%1+interview&searchsubmit=
# END

I am not quite sure why it isn't working, it seems correct to me. Can somebody see my mistake?

[bradgrafelman]

marcnyc wrote:

Can somebody see my mistake?

Yup; the URL will already have been matched before it ever gets to your pattern. This line:

RewriteRule . /index.php [L]

Says "match any single character at any location in the URL and redirect the user to index.php. This should be the last rule that is applied."

[marcnyc]

You know, I had actually thought of that and tried to reverse those two:

# BEGIN Interviews
# Rewrite Rule to allow for old interviews link to work
# http://corz.org/serv/tricks/htaccess2.php
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} /interviews/?interview=(.*)
RewriteRule ^/interviews/(.*) /?s=%1+interview&searchsubmit=
# END

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress

However, even so it still doesn't work and I can't figure out why...

[bradgrafelman]

marcnyc wrote:

However, even so it still doesn't work and I can't figure out why...

Because after a URL matches your rule, the rewrite engine continues on through the list of rules to make sure another rule doesn't match it, in which case the URL falls through to the last matched pattern.

[marcnyc]

I see...

Is there a way to tell it to match the main wordpress rule unless another rule is matched before or after?

[bradgrafelman]

Do the same thing the Wordpress rule does - put your rule before it and use the [L] flag to tell the rewrite engine to stop looking for other rules if a URL matches yours.

[marcnyc]

Cool, I didn't know that that is what [L] does... I added the L flad to my rewrite rule and moved it above the WP one but it still doesn't work :-(

[bradgrafelman]

Woops, looked more carefully at your code and found a few problems.

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} /interviews/?interview=(.*)

The 'query string' is everything in the URI after the question mark, so you probably want to remove everything before (and including) the question mark on that line.

Also, on my installation of Apache 2.2 (on Windows), the URL passed to the RewriteRule doesn't begin with a leading '/', so your pattern wouldn't ever match a URL on my computer. Not sure if the *nix version of the webserver is different (don't know why it would/should be, either), but you could cover both cases by adding a '?' after the slash (indicating it should appear 0 or 1 times, according to standard regular expression syntax).

[marcnyc]

I am not quite sure I follow you 100% but I have tried to follow your suggestions and altered the two lines like this:

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} interview=(.)
RewriteRule ^{interviews/(.}) /?s=%1+interview&searchsubmit= [L]

But I still don't see any re-direction whatsoever taking place, not even a wrong one...

[bradgrafelman]

Hmm... try this rule instead:

RewriteRule ^/?interviews/.* /?s=%1+interview&searchsubmit= [L]

[marcnyc]

still no go :-(

how can I trouble shoot this?
I have tried removing the WP section but I don't see any changes even then...

[marcnyc]

any other ideas?

[marcnyc]

sorry to bump again but it's been 10 days and was wondering if anyone else has any ideas to contribute

[marcnyc]

re-bump ;-)