Development .htaccess Redirect Madness

I have just rewritten a single page for work using some php. I want to redirect the old .html page to the new .php page. Simple, huh? The problem is that the university's system uses GET to wrap their template around every page. In this case, the old page is http://www.uvm.edu/irb/?Page=m1_forms.html&SM=humanmenu1.html and I just want to change the "m1_forms.html" to "m1_forms.php." It seems like it should be a relatively easy task, but I just can't figure it out. Any takers?

 

Can you change the meta tags? If so you could just do it the old way with:

Code:

<meta http-equiv="Refresh" content="0; url=m1_forms.php />

 

trigger, no!

http://www.uvm.edu/irb/.htaccess:

Code:

Redirect 301 /?Page=m1_forms.html* http://www.uvm.edu/irb/?Page=m1_forms.php

 

Fophillips, that seems like it should work, and makes perfect sense to me, but it just doesn't do anything. But I was playing around with it, and I can't get even a very simple one to work:

Code:

Redirect 301 /m1_forms.html http://www.uvm.edu/irb/m1_forms.php

I've used ever combination of syntax changes and file paths that I can think of. Is it possible that the server has just turned off redirects?

**Ninja Edit**

I tried it on my own server and the simple one I posted above works, but the one you posted before doesn't. I'm getting the feeling it's the server config, at least partially...

 

You may need to allow overrides if it isn't working.

 

From what I can tell, "Allow Override" is a sitewide preference set in httpd.conf (correct me if I'm wrong). We are just a small part of a large institution, and there's no way the main web team will change it just for us. I'll try if it's the only way, but that brings me to my next point: I got mod_rewrite to work, at least without the GET part. This:

Code:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^\m1_forms.html$ m1_forms.php

works perfectly. But I can't figure out how to put in the GET part.

 

You can put it in the htaccess as far as I am aware.

Something along these lines?

Code:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^\m1_forms.html(?something=(.*))?$ m1_forms.php?something=$2

 

If "AllowOverride All" tells Apache to look for .htaccess files, and it is not set currently, how is Apache going to read the .htaccess file to see that it is supposed to read .htaccess files? Also, how much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

And as far as the GET line goes, I just need it to match this particular file. I was thinking that this would work:

Code:

RewriteRule ^\?Page=m1_forms.html$ /irb/?Page=m1_forms.php [R,L]

But it doesn't.

 

Try removing the $

 

No such luck. But

Code:

RewriteRule ^m1_forms.html$ /irb/?Page=m1_forms.php [R,L]

works just the same with or without it.

 

Yes, but $ signifies the end of a URL. So ^m1_forms.html would match m1_forms.htmlkhdsiabibngonjoabnhbghablnjnajklngkjl

 

Ah, that makes sense. I assumed there was some significance, and there it is. But the ?Page= part is still screwing it up for some reason.

Btw, thanks for helping so far guys. I've learned quite a bit about this whole htaccess thing, even if it's driving me a bit insane.

 

Can't you get your uni to stop using GET to access pages?

 

The pages technically work fine without the GET bs, it just doesn't wrap the template around them. Also, they actually are working on a total redesign using a cms, but it's still a ways out. It certainly won't be done before my summer job is...

It's a good thing that people won't be creating their own html files, though. You should see the amount of dreamweaver-crap that I needed to wade through.

 

Allright, this has officially stopped making sense to me. Nothing will match the ? in a url. This should match:

Code:

RewriteRule ^.+m1_forms.html /irb/?Page=m1_forms.php [R,L]

But it doesn't match http://www.uvm.edu/irb/?Page=m1_forms.html. If I take the question mark out (http://www.uvm.edu/irb/Page=m1_forms.html), it matches, and if I put in anything in its stead, it matches, but the question mark keeps it from matching.

 

? is a special character in regexs, it means 'zero or one' (in the same way + means 'one or more'). Try escaping it with a backslash,

Code:

RewriteRule ^.+m1_forms.html /irb/\?Page=m1_forms.php [R,L]

 

Is the second part regex?

 

After reading the question properly, probably not

 

Yeah, I've tried escaping the question mark in the first part (the only regex part, as you've determined). I've tried using .+ which doesn't work either. Basically I can't find anything in regex that will match a question mark.

 

Gah, I give up. Meta refresh, here I come...