Redirecting website directory another directory using htaccess

In this post, we will see, how to redirect a website directory to another directory using a .htaccess file on the server.

With .htaccess you can:

1. Rewrite URLs
2. Specify your own Error Documents
3. Password protect a specific directory
4. Block users by IP
5. Redirect the user to the different page

Redirecting within the same domain

Using htaccess in the root level of your web server, how you redirect one page to another is:

RewriteRule ^url-string-to-redirect$ http://www.yourdomain.com/your-new-url-string [R=301,L]

Or

Redirect 301 /path/to-old-url    http://www.yourdomain.com/path/to-new-url

To redirect the contents of a whole directory to another use the below:

RewriteRule ^subdirectory/(.*)$ /anotherdirectory/$1 [R=301,NC,L]

To redirect the contents of a whole directory to the web server root:

RewriteRule ^subdirectory/(.*)$ /$1 [R=301,NC,L]

To redirect the contents of a subdirectory to another domain but in the same subdirectory

Redirect 301 /subdirectory http://www.anotherdomain.com/subdirectory

Make sure that the opening of the .htaccess file contains the 2 lines of code below which enables the Apache module to rewrite the URLs, then place your redirections below them

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On

Redirecting to a different domain

Redirect URLs From Old To New Domain Using 301 Redirects In .htaccess

When you need to switch a website from an old domain to a new domain, you need to redirect all your page URLs, this is when htaccess is your friend.

The code below will create 301 URL redirects for both the www and non-www version of ‘olddomain.com‘ to the new domain  ‘newdomain.com‘. Add this .htaccess file to the OLD site webroot and upload the files from the old site to the new to see a seamless switch from an old domain to a new one.

So the example below is redirecting all URLs from olddomain.com to newdomain.com, this is also the 301 redirect to use when using Googles Change of Address tool in Search Console.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^olddomain.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.olddomain.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://newdomain.com/$1 [L,R=301,NC]

The above will use the non-www as a preference.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.olddomain\.com$
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^olddomain\.com$
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

The above here will redirect 301 all URLs from one domain to another but give preference to the www version.

You can also apply this to a subdomain – so the example below is redirecting all URLs from subdomain.olddomain.com to subdomain.newdomain.com

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^subdomain.olddomain.com$ 
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://subdomain.newdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L] 
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.subdomain.olddomain.com$ 
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://subdomain.newdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

You can also mask a domain which is like a redirect but keeps the old domain URL but shows the remaining part of the new URL of the new domain –

example …

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^olddomain.com
RewriteRule ^(.*) http://newdomain.com/$1 [P]

Force a Directory Folder or WebSite to go over HTTPS SSL with htaccess

To force a website to use the secure protocol SSL running the whole site over HTTPS you can make a simple edit to the .htaccess file in the document root.

RewriteEngine On 
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} 80 
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.example.com/$1 [R,L]

To force a particular folder or directory to serve over SSL, create a .htaccess file in that folder and apply the following to it:

RewriteEngine On 
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} 80 
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} somefolder 
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.domain.com/somefolder/$1 [R,L]

This assumes SSL is enabled on the domain on an Apache Web Server with the  mod_rewrite module enabled.

Redirecting WWW to non-WWW with htaccess

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.(.*)$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://%1/$1 [R=301,L]