.htaccess is very powerful. In magento site, sometimes you will need to redirect a URL to another URL so that the easiest way to do this job is .htaccess file. In this tutorial I will show you a very easy to way to do that.
Since .htaccess is a hidden system file, please make sure your FTP client is configured to show hidden files. This is usually an option in the program’s preferences/options.
Let’s do these step to create a redirection by .htaccess file.
1. Create an empty text file using a text editor such as notepad, and save it as htaccess.txt.
2. Edit the contents of the file. Check the following examples
301 (Permanent) Redirect: Point an entire site to a different URL on a permanent basis. This is the most common type of redirect and is useful in most situations. In this example, we are redirecting to the “mt-example.com” domain:
[code]# This allows you to redirect your entire website to any other domain
Redirect 301 / http://mt-example.com/
# This allows you to redirect your entire website to any other domain
Redirect 301 / http://mt-example.com/[/code]
302 (Temporary) Redirect: Point an entire site to a different temporary URL. This is useful for SEO purposes when you have a temporary landing page and plan to switch back to your main landing page at a later date:
[code]# This allows you to redirect your entire website to any other domain
Redirect 302 / http://mt-example.com/
# This allows you to redirect your entire website to any other domain
Redirect 302 / http://mt-example.com/
Redirect index.html to a specific subfolder:
# This allows you to redirect index.html to a specific subfolder
Redirect /index.html http://example.com/newdirectory/[/code]
Redirect an old file to a new file path:
[code]# Redirect old file path to new file path
Redirect /olddirectory/oldfile.html http://example.com/newdirectory/newfile.html
Redirect to a specific index page:
# Provide Specific Index Page (Set the default handler)
DirectoryIndex index.html
# This allows you to redirect index.html to a specific subfolder
Redirect /index.html http://example.com/newdirectory/
Redirect an old file to a new file path:
# Redirect old file path to new file path
Redirect /olddirectory/oldfile.html http://example.com/newdirectory/newfile.html
Redirect to a specific index page:
# Provide Specific Index Page (Set the default handler)
DirectoryIndex index.html[/code]
3. Upload this file and re-name it to .htaccess
MORE POWERFUL URL CHANGES WITH MOD_REWRITE
If you need to make complex changes to the way your URL displays, you should visit Using .htaccess rewrite rules. You can do things like add “www” to the beginning of your URL, redirect all requests to a subfolder but keep the rest of the URL, etc.