301 Redirect of Static HTML to Dynamic PHP Page

Question

After upgrading our website, many old links that people have in blogs, etc. are now going to our 404 error page.

An example is: (using h#p b/c I'm a new user and can't post links)

h#p://www.site.com/pressreleases/some_release.html h#p://www.site.com/pressreleases/another_release.html

These items are now part of a db-driven site and would be live here:

h#p://www.site.com/pressreleases/details.php?id=1 h#p://www.site.com/pressreleases/details.php?id=2

How can I set up the 301 to redirect

h#p://www.site.com/pressreleases/some_release.html to h#p://www.site.com/pressreleases/details.php?id=1

and

h#p://www.site.com/pressreleases/another_release.html to h#p://www.site.com/pressreleases/details.php?id=2

??

Thanks

Answer 1

Compose a .htaccess file in the pressreleases directory and specify the following:

Redirect 301 some_release.html details.php?id=1

If you would like to redirect using regular expressions, use mod_rewrite as explained here.

There are various options listed on this page.

Answer 2

If you have a lot of these URLs, and assuming you have access to the Apache config, consider creating a "redirects.inc" file in /etc/apache2 (or anywhere really) and then adding "include /etc/apache2/redirects.inc" to your virtual host. That way you have one place to add/update your redirects.