.htaccess and permanent redirection issues

.htaccess and permanent redirection issues - .htaccess files are extremely useful in many cases for users who either do not have root permissions or for users who simply aren't comfortable in making changes in their web server's configuration file. Trying to debug .htaccess not working isn't always the easiest thing to do, however, hopefully by checking the discuss below mentioned about seo, htaccess, wordpress, 301-redirect, .htaccess common problems as well as the troubleshooting tips, you'll have a better grasp on what you may have to modify to get your .htaccess file running smoothly.Problem :

I have a WordPress website hosted on Bluehost which contains the following URL pattern:

http://www.example.com/2017/01/30/sample-post/

I want to permanent redirect it to use this:

http://www.example.com/sample-post/

So I opened .htaccess kept in the example.com folder and changed it to this

RewriteEngine On
RedirectMatch 301 ^/([^/]+)/$ http://www.example.com/$1

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %REQUEST_FILENAME !-f
RewriteCond %REQUEST_FILENAME !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>

# END WordPress

Then I went to my Permalink Settings in the Wordpress admin and changed my "Common Settings" from "Day and name" to "Custom Structure"
/%postname%/

Now when I access http://www.example.com/2017/01/30/sample-post/ it gives me

404 | Page Not Found! Sorry, but the page you were looking for is not
here.

And when I access the URL directly http://www.example.com/sample-post/
it gives me

too many redirects error.

Where am I goofing up?

Solution :

RedirectMatch 301 ^/([^/]+)/$ http://www.example.com/$1

The pattern ^/([^/]+)/$ doesn't match the URL-path /2017/01/30/sample-post/, so these URLs will not be redirected. However, it does match /sample-post/ - which is why you get the redirect loop.

However, RedirectMatch is also a mod_alias directive, not mod_rewrite. (RewriteEngine does not apply.) You should change this to a mod_rewrite directive to avoid potential conflicts and unexpected results. (Different Apache modules execute at different times, despite their apparent order in the config file.)

So, try the following instead:

RewriteRule ^d4/dd/dd/(.+) /$1 [R=302,L]

This specifically matches a URL of the form /2017/01/30/sample-post/ (the trailing slash is not enforced). Your redirect would have actually stripped the trailing slash.

Make sure your browser cache is cleared before testing. Change the 302 to a 301 only when you are sure it's working OK. (302s avoid being cached.)

Additionally, if you would like to do some further testing, give the htaccess tester tool a try. It allows you to specify a certain URL as well as the rules you would like to include and then shows which rules were tested, which ones met the criteria, and which ones were executed.