.htaccess redirect all pages to the homepage on a new domain

Question

Which redirect rule would I use to redirect all pages under olddomain.example to be redirected to newdomain.example?

The site has a totally different structure, so I want every page under the old domain to be redirected to the new domain index page.

I thought this would do (under olddomain.example base directory):

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://newdomain.example/ [R=301]

But if I navigate to olddomain.example/somepage I get redirected to newdomain.example/somepage. I am expecting a redirect only to newdomain.example without the page suffix.

How do I keep the last part out?

To save time, scroll down to the right best answer which is `RewriteEngine on` `RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]` * http://stackoverflow.com/a/7578810/1066234 — Avatar, Oct 20 '15 at 11:10
It's worth pointing out that, particularly from an SEO perspective, having a many-to-one redirect to the index/home page is generally a bad idea. Google is likely to see it as a soft-404. — MrWhite, Jan 07 '17 at 12:28
If you are looking for an `htaccess tutorial`, you can find it on the following link https://helponnet.com/2021/04/15/htaccess-tutorial-for-beginers/ — Amit Verma, Jan 09 '22 at 18:41
@Avatar Except that _that_ answer is not answering the question being asked! (And has since been edited anyway.) — MrWhite, Mar 23 '23 at 21:47

score 516 · Answer 1 · edited Mar 07 '22 at 13:13

516

The below answer could potentially cause an infinite redirect loop...

Here, this one redirects everything after the domain name on the URL to the exact same copy on the new domain URL:

RewriteEngine on 
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.newdomain.com/ [R=301,L]

www.example.net/somepage.html?var=foo

redirects to:

www.newdomain.com

edited Mar 07 '22 at 13:13

Henry Henrinson

5,203
7
44
76

answered Sep 28 '11 at 05:42

24

won't this redirect EVERY request though, even those for newdomain.com? And essentially cause two duplicate requests in those cases? – Bill Dami Aug 02 '13 at 17:02
39

The question is to redirect everything to the home page – kravits88 Jan 23 '14 at 00:23
36

Though this is not the answer of the question, but I came to this question from SE seeking exactly this answer. thanks !!! – dav Mar 16 '14 at 17:28
How we can do for redirecting from subdomain to new domain? – Sukhjinder Singh Jun 17 '15 at 06:05
3

Could someone answer Bill's question please. Shouldn't this use a RewriteCond to prevent a duplicate request and/or unnecessary re-writes? I suppose it wouldn't have any noticeable impact to re-write every time even though it isn't necessary. But why do it. – Andrew Mar 29 '16 at 02:20
you are god man. however, you forgot to put a slash before &1. it should be RewriteEngine on RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L] – funky-nd Nov 08 '17 at 14:08
Not what was asked in details of the question, but this was what the title means and what I came here to find – JaKK's Team Nov 08 '21 at 03:21
Thanks. Its important to point out that the last part `[R=301,L]` is important else you'll get an error saying the document has moved. – Gilbert Feb 02 '22 at 11:01
This does not answer the original question, why is this so highly voted? – Henry Henrinson Mar 07 '22 at 13:12
@HenryHenrinson Because it (was) the answer that most people are expecting/wanting when they find this question. (But in editing the question to remove the `$1` backreference, it's now the same as the code in the question - except for the addition of the `L` flag - and doesn't match the description that precedes it!?) – MrWhite Mar 23 '23 at 21:45

score 249 · Accepted Answer · edited Jan 21 '17 at 00:16

249

May be like this:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^OLDDOMAIN\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://NEWDOMAIN.com [R=301,L]

edited Jan 21 '17 at 00:16

carla

1,970
1
31
44

answered Dec 22 '09 at 10:50

YOU

120,166
34
186
219

Um, could you try reload your browser? its even redirecting with xampp here. I just tested. – YOU Dec 22 '09 at 10:58
My bad... it does work, my hosting service had some other redirect on which was fu**** things up. Thanks! :) – Yuval Adam Dec 22 '09 at 10:59
32

Wouldn't it be `RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^NEWDOMAIN\.com$ [NC]`? – Jim Geurts Jun 21 '12 at 18:28
Didn't work for me. The code from Yuval Adam (see below) works like a charm. – xaviert Sep 08 '12 at 09:45
Fwiw here's a good explanation of the syntax for a solution to a very similar problem: [Migrate domains](http://enarion.net/web/htaccess/migrate-domains/). – JohnK Oct 21 '12 at 13:24
may be I should remove RewriteCond, but I never had a chance to test it. If someone know better, may be go ahead and edit it. – YOU Jan 27 '16 at 14:56
1

After a long winter I edited the code so it can finally work. (the correct is to redirect if EQUAL and not DIFFERENT to olddomain, that ! was the problem) – carla Jan 20 '17 at 18:59
6

@JimGeurts Only if you want to redirect EVERYTHING that is not newdomain. However, in this case, we wanted to redirect ONLY olddomain. – carla Jan 20 '17 at 19:00

score 96 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 22 '09 at 11:03

96

Just to clarify, after removing the hosting redirect which was in the way, my original solution also works:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://newdomain.com/ [R=301]

answered Dec 22 '09 at 11:03

Yuval Adam

161,610
92
305
395

1

This will redirect to the default index, which is what your question was about. Just for clarity, since, due to proximity, your statement appears to be directed toward user968421's answer just above this, user968421's answer is correct when the intent is to redirect to a corresponding file name on the new domain. – RationalRabbit Aug 08 '16 at 14:50
This should be the correct answer! Redirect everything from old domain to the new domain period. Works like a charm! And yes hosting redirect must be removed. The best is hash entire .htaccess living only this rule at the top. Thanks – Maryando Dec 21 '22 at 11:00
You should also include the `L` flag. If you have any other directives (not that you necessarily would in this particular case) then this will likely fail. And this does assume the old and new domains point to different servers. – MrWhite Mar 23 '23 at 11:57
this worked where others didn't for me in 2023 – mdkb May 15 '23 at 02:14

Iana Tempos · Answer 4 · 2022-04-28T09:03:35.700

43

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

This worked for me

edited Apr 28 '22 at 09:03

answered Oct 27 '16 at 06:34

Iana Tempos

582
4
13

Yes, this method would be clean and nice !, worked for me as well. – Cody Aug 30 '18 at 07:57
1

this will redirect with the parameter in URl if any - index.php?aa=9 will carry the parameter to new domain – Darksymphony May 15 '19 at 15:55
3

The safest solution. Especially when both domains are controlled by the same .htaccess. – Marco Sadowski Aug 23 '21 at 08:21
3

In my opinion, this answer should be the chosen answer since it covers the most common redirect cases. The only thing I would add is that you can change `[OR]` to `[NC,OR]` if you also need case-insensitivity. See the [RewriteRule Flags](https://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/rewrite/flags.html#flag_nc) for more info. – Tyler Dec 31 '21 at 20:30

Daantje · Answer 5 · 2021-02-10T11:41:26.263

28

I've used for my Wordpress blog this as .htaccess. It converts http://www.blah.example/asad, http://blah.example/asad, http://www.blah.example2/asad etc, to http://blah.example/asad Thanks to all other answers I figured this out.

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^YOURDOMAIN\.example$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://YOURDOMAIN.example/$1 [R=301,L]

RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>

edited Feb 10 '21 at 11:41

answered Oct 21 '14 at 19:05

Daantje

2,406
25
26

2

I consider this the most comprehensive answer of all: it preserves ranking for every page and is a catchall for all domains that are not the primary one! What could be better? – nzn Aug 05 '15 at 21:54
1

The key here is that the domain rewrite rule comes _before_ the WordPress index rewrite rule. – MrMoxy Jun 15 '16 at 04:36
This answer is very good. It can be redirect anything that is not in newdomain.com to newdomain.com including olddomain.com, sub1.olddomain.com to sub999.olddomain.com in just one condition. – vee Mar 22 '22 at 05:12

score 18 · Answer 6 · answered May 13 '15 at 05:55

18

There are various ways to do this and various redirects, I've listed them below:

301 (Permanent) Redirect: Point an entire site to a different URL on a permanent basis. This is the most common type of redirect and is useful in most situations. In this example, we are redirecting to the "example.com" domain:

# This allows you to redirect your entire website to any other domain
Redirect 301 / http://example.com/

302 (Temporary) Redirect: Point an entire site to a different temporary URL. This is useful for SEO purposes when you have a temporary landing page and plan to switch back to your main landing page at a later date:

# This allows you to redirect your entire website to any other domain
Redirect 302 / http://example.com/

Redirect index.html to a specific subfolder:

# This allows you to redirect index.html to a specific subfolder
Redirect /index.html http://example.com/newdirectory/

Redirect an old file to a new file path:

# Redirect old file path to new file path
Redirect /olddirectory/oldfile.html http://example.com/newdirectory/newfile.html

Redirect to a specific index page:

# Provide Specific Index Page (Set the default handler)
DirectoryIndex index.html

answered May 13 '15 at 05:55

RustyIngles

2,433
4
27
31

If you add $1 to the first example , like this `Redirect 301 / http://example.com/$1` then all the pages of the original site will be redirected to the new site root – Yassin Mokni May 23 '16 at 14:17
@YassinMK The `$1` is not required here, you are thinking of the `RedirectMatch` directive (but then you would still need to define a capturing group for the `$1` to reference). – MrWhite Jan 07 '17 at 14:22
Although all these `Redirect` directives will redirect like for like, whereas the OP is wanting to redirect just to the home page of the new site (although that in itself is not to be recommended). You might need to use the `RedirectMatch` directive if you wanted to just redirect to a specific URL. – MrWhite Jan 07 '17 at 14:23
instead of 301 you could also write Redirect permanent / h ttps://www.example.com, you can do this in the vhost file – Yvon Huynh Jul 05 '17 at 19:20
But the question related to .htaccess so why mention the vhost file? – RustyIngles Jul 05 '17 at 19:39

score 12 · Answer 7 · answered Dec 12 '13 at 10:09

12

If you want to redirect from some location to subdomain you can use:

Redirect 301 /Old-Location/ http://subdomain.yourdomain.com

answered Dec 12 '13 at 10:09

EmptySD

131
1
7

It's the best way. Because much Webhosters didn't allow use of RewriteEngine in .htaccess. This works great anyway! – Sprinterfreak Jan 10 '15 at 00:14
You must use RewriteEngine to redirect. Reason why you had problem is that RewriteEngine was already active and you needed only redirect rule. I'm glad that helped. – EmptySD Jan 11 '15 at 05:31
Not true. It skips all Rewrite thing and when using `RewriteEngine On` throws 500 Internal Error. It's a very restricted Webspace. Using `Redirect 301 / http://foo` is the only possible way to deal with. – Sprinterfreak Jan 13 '15 at 21:24
1

This will result in a malformed redirect since you are missing a trailing slash on the target URL. With the `Redirect` directive you need to either include or omit the trailing slash on _both_ the source and target URLs. – MrWhite Feb 09 '21 at 18:23

score 8 · Answer 8 · answered May 15 '19 at 16:02

8

Simple just like this and this will not carry the trailing query from URL to new domain.

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule .* https://www.newdomain.com/? [R=301,L]

answered May 15 '19 at 16:02

Darksymphony

2,155
30
54

1

that actually worked for me , need a solution with out passing any slug to new domain Thanks Dsynmphony – Faisal Mehmood Awan May 08 '20 at 06:00

score 7 · Answer 9 · answered Jul 01 '16 at 11:01

If the new domain you are redirecting your old site to is on a diffrent host, you can simply use a Redirect

Redirect 301 / http://newdomain.com

This will redirect all requests from olddomain to the newdomain .

Redirect directive will not work or may cause a Redirect loop if your newdomain and olddomain both are on same host, in that case you'll need to use mod-rewrite to redirect based on the requested host header.

RewriteEngine on


RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www\.)?olddomain\.com$
RewriteRule ^ http://newdomain.com%{REQUEST_URI} [NE,L,R]

score 7 · Answer 10 · answered Jan 04 '18 at 18:39

7

My reputation won't allow me to comment on an answer, but I just wanted to point out that the highest rated answer here has an error:

RewriteEngine on 
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.newdomain.com$1 [R=301,L]

should have a slash before the $1, so

RewriteEngine on 
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

answered Jan 04 '18 at 18:39

John Brandenburg

141
1
4

The "highest rated answer" was actually _corrected_ a month after this answer was posted. – MrWhite Feb 09 '21 at 18:27

J May · Answer 11 · 2016-04-07T00:12:53.660

I tried user968421's answer and the OP's solution but the browser popped up a security error for a checkout page. I can't tell you why exactly.

Our host (Site Ground) couldn't figure it out either.

The final solution was close, but a slight tweak to user968421's answer (side note: unlike the OP, I was trying to redirect to the corresponding page, not just to the homepage so I maintained the back reference [the $1 after the domain] from user968421's answer):

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule (.*) https://newdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Got the tweak from this htaccess redirect generator recommended by a Host Gator article (desperate times, desperate measures, amiright?).

tim · Answer 12 · 2022-12-28T15:24:59.853

To swap out the domain and leave the requested path and query as is:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
  RewriteEngine on
  RewriteRule ^ https://example.com%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,QSA,L]
</IfModule>

%{REQUEST_URI} is an alias for the requested path.

R=301 is a HTTP 301 Moved Permanently

L means last rule, do not consider any more conditions.

QSA meaning Query String Appended keeps any query string (e.g. ?foo=bar)

To adjust the domain and requested path then do this:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
  RewriteEngine on
  RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://example.com/subfolder/$1 [R=301,QSA,L]
</IfModule>

^(.*)$ captures everything in the request path from start to the end.

$1 outputs the first captured group

score 3 · Answer 13 · answered Oct 06 '14 at 10:48

My solution as SymLinks did not work on my server so I used an If in my PHP.

function curPageURL() {
    $pageURL = 'http';
    if ($_SERVER["HTTPS"] == "on") {$pageURL .= "s";}
    $pageURL .= "://";
    if ($_SERVER["SERVER_PORT"] != "80") {
        $pageURL .= $_SERVER["SERVER_NAME"] . ":" . $_SERVER["SERVER_PORT"] . $_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"];
    } else {
        $pageURL .= $_SERVER["SERVER_NAME"] . $_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"];
    }
    return $pageURL;
}
$redirect = str_replace("www.", "", curPageURL());
$remove_http_root    = str_replace('http://', '', $redirect);
$split_url_array     = explode('/', $remove_http_root );


if($split_url_array[0] == "olddomain.com"){
    header("Location: http://www.newdomain.com/$split_url_array[1]");
    die();
}

score 2 · Answer 14 · answered Dec 22 '09 at 11:10

2

This is a bug in older versions of apache (and thus mod_rewrite) where the path prefix was appended to the rewritten path if it got changed. See here

I think it was fixed in apache2 V2.2.12, there is a special flag you need to use which i will add here when i find it, (i think it was NP for No Path)

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://newdomain.com/ [??]

answered Dec 22 '09 at 11:10

Question Mark

3,557
1
25
30

I banged my head against this for nearly a month – Question Mark Dec 22 '09 at 11:12
The flag you are probably referring to is `DPI` (Discard Path-Info). However, this should be irrelevant in the context of the question. This will only apply if you have other internal rewrites that contain path-info. However, this flag should be applied to the rewrites, not the final redirect. – MrWhite Feb 09 '21 at 18:51

score 2 · Answer 15 · answered Dec 22 '09 at 11:10

From the usability point of view it would be better, if you also send the path with the request (i.e., what you have at the moment) and let your new site deal with it:

You searched for "/products".

Unfortunately this page is gone. Would you like to visit "/new_products" instead?

(and better, still, doing this automatically.)

This is obviously a lot of coding and heuristics for a larger website, but in my opinion it would pay off in terms of user satisfaction (when your carefully saved bookmark of your dream product just leads you to the front page of newdomain.com, this is frustrating.)

For said website this is pretty much irrelevant as the whole website has changed, but you are absolutely correct. The website should be as backwards-compatible as possible. +1 — Yuval Adam, Dec 22 '09 at 11:46

score 2 · Answer 16 · answered Dec 01 '19 at 10:41

2

Try this methode to redirect all to homepage new domain, Its works for me:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^olddomain\.com$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.olddomain\.com$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ "https\:\/\/newdomain\.com\/" [R=301,L]

answered Dec 01 '19 at 10:41

Hans Ganteng

179
1
4

score 2 · Answer 17 · answered Mar 02 '21 at 02:11

2

The simplest way is actually just:

Redirect 301 / http://www.newsite.com/

source: https://github.com/phanan/htaccess#redirect-an-entire-site

answered Mar 02 '21 at 02:11

SerialEnabler

872
7
10

Sprinterfreak · Answer 18 · 2015-06-04T00:47:06.903

1

Use conditional redirects with Options -FollowSymLinks and AllowOverride -Options disabled by the Hoster if a few local files should be served too:

Sample .htaccess

# Redirect everything except index.html to http://foo
<FilesMatch "(?<!index\.html)$">
    Redirect 301 / http://foo/
</FilesMatch>

This example will serve local index.html and redirects all other staff to new domain.

edited Jun 04 '15 at 00:47

answered Jan 13 '15 at 21:40

Sprinterfreak

504
4
10

score 1 · Answer 19 · answered May 06 '21 at 05:15

1

This may be work Properly

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://example.com/$1 [R=301,L]
</IfModule>

answered May 06 '21 at 05:15

GOST

45
9

score 0 · Answer 20 · answered Nov 05 '18 at 13:28

The previous answers did not work for me.

I used this code. If you are using OSX make sure to use the correct format.

Options +FollowSymLinks -MultiViews
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www\.)?OLDDOMAIN\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.NEWDOMAIN.com/ [R=301,L]

.htaccess redirect all pages to the homepage on a new domain

20 Answers20

To swap out the domain and leave the requested path and query as is:

To adjust the domain and requested path then do this:

Linked

Related