How do I get my old urls redirected to my mod rewritten ones

Server Config
1

My urls are mod_rewrote as follows

http://localhost/alpha/view?m=mt618&attachment=hose

becomes

http://localhost/alpha/m-mt618-attachment-hose

Here is my .htaccess
Options -MultiViews
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^m-([^-])-attachment-([^-])$ /Dropbox/alpha/httpdocs/view.php?m=$1&attachment=$2 [L]

I’m thinking that for proper SE0, I need to redirect all my old urls with ?'s and the .php to the new pretty url. But I’m not quite sure how to do it. Can someone point me in the right direction?

2

Take a look at the section “Redirect TO New Format” here: Apache’s mod_rewrite

:slight_smile:

3

Okay, Apache can do that but it can not serve scripts in the new format (they have to be redirected back to the real link!). Have I got your head spinning?

I take that quote to mean that if you don’t do it right apache will get in an endless loop…?

I do NOT recommend this (unless you’re on a dedicated server with low volume) as it requires additional processing by Apache.

and I take it that it is a bad idea to redirect from view.php to modrewrite/nice/url/ because it hogs resources.

My fear is that if google found view.php I’d get slammed for duplicate content because two urls (modrewrite one and view.php) point to the same thing. Do you, or anyone else, know how to avoid a duplicate content penalty if you’re not going to redirect to the new url from the old.php file?