You can manipulate the files and what happens with different files at your website or blog host with what is known as an .HTACCESS file.
CAUTION#1
This is some very powerful stuff and you can easily bring down your website quickly. Always make back-ups (yes, multiple backups) of your .HTACCESS file before you make any modifications!
CAUTION #2
Unless you are pretty technically inclined, this is probably NOT stuff you should be doing. I put this information here for reference only. I highly recommend you do more research into managing .htaccess files before just “cutting and pasting” what you see below.
Point an entire site to a different URL, such as domain.net redirected to domain.com:
# This allows you to redirect your entire website to any other domain
Redirect 301 / http://www.anotherwebsite.com/
Redirect index.html to a specific subfolder:
# This allows you to redirect index.html to a specific subfolder
Redirect /index.html http://www.anotherwebsite.com//newdirectory/
Redirect an old file to a new file path:
# Redirect old file path to new file path
Redirect /olddirectory/oldfile.html http://www.anotherwebsite.com//newdirectory/newfile.html
Redirect to a specific index page:
# Provide Specific Index Page (Set the default handler)
DirectoryIndex index.html
Redirect viewers of your domain to use the secure version of your domain:
# An easy to way to always redirect the user to secure connection (https://) can be accomplished with the following lines:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} 80
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.yoursite.com/$1 [R,L]
Redirect users to www for http:// and https://
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} 80
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.yoursite\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yoursite.com/$1 [L,R=301]
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} 443
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.yoursite\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.yoursite.com/$1 [L,R=301]
Redirect users to use https:// for a particular folder:
# In case you wish to force HTTPS for a particular folder you can use the following:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} 80
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} somefolder
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.yoursite.com/somefolder/$1 [R,L]
Redirect users to access the site without www:
# To redirect all users to access the site WITHOUT the www. prefix,
# (http://www.example.com/… will be redirected to http://example.com/…)
# adapt and uncomment the following:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.yoursite\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://yoursite.com/$1 [L,R=301]
Redirect users to use www:
# To redirect all users to access the site WITH the www. prefix,
# (http://example.com/… will be redirected to http://www.example.com/…)
# adapt and uncomment the following:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.yoursite\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yoursite.com/$1 [L,R=301]
Subscribe to my weekly newsletter and I’ll tell you how to book more weddings and
make fewer mistakes with your Internet marketing.
Got a question about Internet marketing? Think you’re getting some bad advice? Are you a Do-It-Yourselfer and stuck? Drop me a line here.
