I am trying to redirect using .htaccess in the following fashion. I am not all that familiar with .htaccess, so I'm not sure it can be done. Also, I don't know if how I am intending to do it follows best practices for SEO.
www.domain.com > domain.com 301
ks.domain.com > kansas.domain.com 301
ia.domain.com > iowa.domain.com 301
domain.com/sites > domain.com 301
domain.com/sites/iowa > iowa.domain.com 301
nonexistent.domain.com > domain.com 302
domain.com/sites/nonexistent > domain.com 302
My biggest question is if I can detect a nonexistent subdomain and redirect. I would love to see how all of the above is accomplished.
First, you need to add wildcard subdomains by creating a subdomain with an *
as its name, only if your web host allows you to do so. And this must be in your .htaccess
, try to test it to see if it works:
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.domain\.com
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://domain.com/$1 [R=301]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^ks\.domain\.com
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://kansas.domain.com/$1 [R=301]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^ia\.domain\.com
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://iowa.domain.com/$1 [R=301]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^domain\.com
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/sites/?$
RewriteRule ^(.*) / [R=301]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^domain\.com
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/sites/iowa/?$
RewriteRule ^(.*) http://iowa.domain.com/ [R=301]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ([a-z0-9-]+)\.domain\.com$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^(.*) http://domain.com/ [R=302]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^domain\.com
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/sites/([a-z0-9-_]+)/?
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-s
RewriteRule ^(.*) http://domain.com/ [R=302]
Just use -f
to test if a requested file exists and is a regular file, -s
if it exists and has a file size greater than 0 and -d
to test if it exists and is a directory.
If you want specific subdomains that do not exist, well you'll just have to create them, and then redirect.
To catch all erroneous subdomains, say I accidentally type metaa.stackoverlow.com
, use a wildcard: *.stackoverflow.com
. In cpanel, this just involves ticking a checkbox that asks 'make wildcard?' or similar. To edit .htaccess directly, just enter *
in place of each specific subdomain.
Note that this also applies for any directories:
subdomain.site.com/*
*.site.com/dir
*.site.com/*