.htaccess Redirect Generator

For a normal URL the generator writes an anchored, exact-match rule:

RedirectMatch 301 ^/old-page$ https://www.example.com/new-page

The ^ and $ anchors mean only /old-page matches. The plain Redirect directive, by contrast, matches by prefix: it would also send /old-page/anything to /new-page/anything, and it loops when the new URL starts with the old one.

When the old URL has a query string

Redirect and RedirectMatch never see the query string. For an old URL such as /old.php?id=5 the generator switches to mod_rewrite:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^id=5$
RewriteRule ^old\.php$ /products/five? [R=301,L,NE]

The trailing ? on the destination drops the old query string so it is not appended to the new URL.

Order matters. Apache applies mod_rewrite rules from top to bottom, and a framework block such as WordPress's sends every request to index.php. Put your redirects above that block:

# Your redirects first
RedirectMatch 301 ^/old-page$ https://www.example.com/new-page

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
...
</IfModule>
# END WordPress

Keep a copy of the file before editing. A syntax error in .htaccess produces a 500 error for the whole site until it is fixed.

# HTTP to HTTPS
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule ^ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]

# non-www to www
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^ https://www.example.com%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]

# Move a whole directory, keeping the rest of the path
RedirectMatch 301 ^/blog/(.*)$ /articles/$1

The same tool is available preset for each server, plus a combined version:

• 301 redirect generator (all servers)
• Nginx redirect generator
• PHP redirect generator
• bulk redirect generator

After the redirects are live, confirm each old URL answers 301 and lands on a working page with the broken link checker, and submit a sitemap of the new URLs made with the XML sitemap generator.