[mdlug] Apache rewrite not working

[Michael ORourke]

>>  On April 29, 2011 8:45 , "Michael ORourke" <mrorourke at earthlink.net> 
>> wrote:
>>      ServerName www.example.com
>>      ServerAlias www.newsite.com
>>      RewriteEngine on
>>      RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example\.com [OR]
>>      RewriteCond %(HTTP_HOST) ^www\.newsite\.com [OR]
>>      RewriteCond %(HTTP_HOST) ^newsite\.com
>>      RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com [R=permanent,L]
>>
>> The DNS records for both the domains point to the same public address.
>> Site Newsite should redirect to www.example.com
>> The first rule for adding www. to example.com does work but neither of 
>> the
>> newsite rules does.
>> I have the same format working for a different site and different virtual
>> host, but the redirect for www.newsite.com does not work.
>
> First, you have parentheses instead of curly brackets around HTTP_HOST in 
> the second and third RewriteCond lines.  Fix this.
>
> Also note that HTTP_HOST is the value of the Host header in the HTTP 
> request, and that this will not be set by web browsers or other clients 
> using HTTP 1.0; only by clients using HTTP 1.1 or above.  The only good 
> way around this that I know of is to use by-IP virtual hosts for each 
> separate fully qualified domain name that a client might use to access 
> your web server.  But you can skip this if you know for sure that no 
> client will use HTTP 1.0 or if you're OK with those clients not being 
> redirected and always remember that this can happen.
>
> Next, try getting rid of the regular expression pattern matching and do 
> string matching instead; this is simpler and may be more reliable:
>
>     RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} =example.com [OR]
>     RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} =www.newsite.com [OR]
>     RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} =newsite.com
>     RewriteRule . http://www.example.com [R=permanent,L]
>
>
> If that does not work, use the RewriteLog directive to enable logging of 
> what mod_rewrite is doing, and add a RewriteLogLevel directive that sets 
> the logging level to 9.  Then try one of the requests that are not being 
> properly rewritten, and see if the reason is obvious from the rewrite log 
> messages; if not, post the messages here so we can take a look at them.
>
> (Note that I've changed the pattern for the RewriteRule above to something 
> shorter and more efficient that also avoids the overhead of setting up a 
> capture, since you're not using $1 in the substitution part of the rule.)
>
> I hope this helps.
>
> --
>   Mark Montague
>   mark at catseye.org

It's amazing, Apache rewrite rules don't work when you have the wrong 
syntax!  ;-)
Once I replaced the parenthesis with curly braces, things were working once 
again.
Thanks for catching that.

Note to self... increase terminal font size and triple check rewrite syntax.

Thanks,
Mike