I have a client with an old website without 'pretty' URLs. So currently it looks like this:
http://www.domain.com/?w=42&a=5&b=3
The parameter values are numbers only.
Now they want to move the old site to a subdomain and main (www) domain would be home to a new website (WP with SEO friendly URLs).
Now what I would like to do is redirect all requests that come to the /?w=<num> (and ONLY those) to sub.domain.com/?w=<num>, so that existing links (mostly from Google) get redirected to the subdomain page, while the new page works serving new content thorough pretty URLs.
I tried this:
# This works, but redirects the entire www.domain.com
# to sub.domain.com no mather what
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.domain\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://sub.domain.com/$1 [R=301,L]
# But this DOESN'T work
RewriteRule ^/?w(.*) http://sub.domain.com/?w$1 [R=301,L]
# Also tried to redirect 'by hand', but DIDN'T work either
Redirect 301 /?w=42 http://sub.domain.com/?w=42
What am I doing wrong? I searched high and low but always end up with this kind of suggestions. Or maybe I'm just searching for wrong keywords ...
Thank you!
You can't match against the query string inside a rewrite rule or a redirect directive. You need to match against the %{QUERY_STRING} variable. Try:
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} (^|&)w=[0-9]+(&|$)
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://sub.domain.com/$1 [L,R=301]
Note that the query string gets automatically appended to the end of the rule's destination.
Just for documentation: If you want to redirect one directory (path) only if there is a URL parameter present, from one path to another, while maintaining the URL parameter, you can use this in your htaccess file:
# /programs/?id=1 to new path /loadprog/?id=1
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/programs/
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} id=
RewriteRule ^programs\/$ /loadprog/$1 [R=301,L]
I am sure this will help others since I stumbled over the question above trying to find this answer.