Trying to Use .Htaccess to 301 redirect all pages but one. However The One Page Exception Rule is Not Working

Question

I have been trying to redirect all of my website's pages to a new website but would like to rule out one single page as an exception. This is the code I am using:

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/en/planning/$
RewriteRule .* https://www.target.example/ [R=301,L]

As you can see, I am trying redirect all pages to a new domain but leave the /en/planning/ page intact. However, when I use the code above, all pages were redirected without an exception. From the server, I found out that /en/planning directory does not really exist. The template to the page however, exists in a different directory.

They are here > /home/indo/src-20220316-200538/apps/front/templates/planning/views/planning-view.html.

The header & footer of the page was built in a different directory.

Meanwhile the public_html of the website lies on /home/indo/www/ In this directory, there is a shortcut to the original location that is named "front". Here is a screenshot from WinSCP:

So, based on this, what is the best way to make /en/planning/ as an exception? the website I am trying to redirect is http://source.example/ to https://www.target.example/. In addition, the website is running with Fat-Free Framework.

I have been stuck here for weeks and this is frustating.

Answer 1

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/en/planning/$
RewriteRule .* https://www.target.example/ [R=301,L]

You no doubt have other directives (a front-controller pattern) that rewrites URLs of the form /en/planning/ to the front-controller, which performs the underlying routing. Your front-controller might be index.php, or something else.

The "problem" here is that when the request is rewritten to the front-controller, the REQUEST_URI server variable is no longer /en/planning/, but is updated to /index.php (or whatever the front-controller is) and the redirect occurs, since the negated condition is now successful. The rewrite engine makes multiple passes, the undesirable redirect is likely occurring on the second pass (the exception is successful initially).

You need to ensure that the you only check the originally requested URL and not the rewritten URL.

However, you also likely need to make an exception for any static resources (images, CSS, JS, etc) that are used by this page, otherwise these would also be redirected.

Try the following instead:

RewriteCond %{ENV:REDIRECT_STATUS} ^$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/en/planning/$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^ https://www.target.example/ [R=301,L]

The check against the REDIRECT_STATUS environment variable ensures that we only test the initial request from the client and not the rewritten request by Apache.

The additional check against REQUEST_FILENAME ensures that the requested URL does not map to an actual file (a static resource). However, the obvious downside of this is that static resources (for other pages) are not redirected.

You also need to make sure the browser cache is cleared, since the erroneous 301 (permanent) redirect will have been cached by the browser. Test first with 302 (temporary) redirects to avoid potential caching issues.

I would add, however, that a many-to-one redirect to the homepage, as you are implementing here is generally bad for SEO since search engines (particularly Google) will see this as a soft-404 and not honour the redirect, ultimately dropping the pages from the search results.