Forum Topic: Redirecting pages with spaces in the old url (%20)

Forum: .htaccess Forum : Redirecting • Posted by Ann Lockquell • Updated:

Hi,

Just bought you book… happy to have it now… it will be very helpfull…

I?ve search in it the responce of one of my problem and and don’t found it…

I had a new client that have, in his old site, many files to redirect.

Everything goes well untill I have old files that have spaces (%20) in the document?s name…

I have more than 100 like this…

ex:

Redirect 301 /folder/the%20document%20name.pdf http://www.website.com/folder/subfolder/the-new-document-name.pdf

I’ve tried this code

Redirect 301 "/folder/the document name.pdf" http://www.website.com/folder/subfolder/the-new-document-name.pdf

It works but… as soon as I have more than 2 like this in the htaccess file… it bugs

Can you help me?

Thanks

/Ann

6 Replies to “Redirecting pages with spaces in the old url (%20)”

Posted by Jeff Starr •

Hi Ann,

Thank you for buying my book, I’ll gladly try to help with this. Using RedirectMatch should help get us there. Here is one way to match the blank space character:

RedirectMatch 301 /folder/the(\s)document(\s)name.pdf http://www.website.com/folder/subfolder/the-new-document-name.pdf

Basically the trick is to use \s for matching blank spaces.

Depending on the URLs, there may be further ways of consolidating the redirect patterns into fewer rules — it all depends on what needs matched.

Posted by Ann Lockquell •

Hi again… I’m working with french speaking website also…

I have the same probleme with some url contening accent (ex: e, a, i etc)

How can I code the redirect of those ones?

/Ann

Posted by Jeff Starr •

I’m able to redirect URLs containing those containers just using them literally, like so:

RedirectMatch 301 test http:/example.com/

If that’s not working, something else could be interfering.. what are a couple of example URLs that aren’t redirecting properly?

Posted by Ann Lockquell •

Ok, I will try it … I will let you know if it works well

Thanks

Posted by Ann Lockquell •

Ok… just had the chance to try your trick for the first part of my problem ( blank spaces) I’v try it with only two link to redirect as I’ve done previously with the " " coding…

does not work… it brings me on an error page…

Posted by Jeff Starr •

Okay, three questions that will help troubleshoot:

  • What version of Apache
  • What is the URL that doesn’t redirect
  • What is the exact redirect code you are using

It may be that something else is interfering with the redirect, so this info will help diagnose further..