Redirect site with .htaccess but exclude one folder

Question

I want to 301 redirect an entire website, but exclude everything in a folder called /uploads which exists in the /root directory.

I have googled for this, but didn't come up with anything, or I didn't think what I saw was right.

Can we crack this?

score 94 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 05 '10 at 11:01

94

Try this mod_rewrite rule:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule !^uploads($|/) http://example.com%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]

This rule does match any URL path that does not begin with either /uploads or /uploads/ (leading / is missing in the pattern due to the path prefix removal when used in .htaccess files) and redirects the request to the corresponding path at example.com.

answered Aug 05 '10 at 11:01

Gumbo

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Is there an option to do this in background, so the user doesn't get actually redirected, but all the request gets proxied into another address? – p1100i Apr 08 '13 at 18:43
@burninggramma Try `P` instead of `R=301`. – Gumbo Apr 08 '13 at 18:46
@Gumbo I get a 403 forbidden – p1100i Apr 08 '13 at 18:59
Thank you. I used your answer for my own convoluted requirements http://stackoverflow.com/a/35435802/80353 – Kim Stacks Feb 16 '16 at 15:02

score 73 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 27 '12 at 15:30

73

Simple answer I just stumbled upon myself.

At the top before any other calls add the following

RewriteRule ^(uploads) - [L]

answered Aug 27 '12 at 15:30

PseudoNinja

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If anyone is curious what the [L] does: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/rewrite/flags.html#flag_l – Mark Steudel Aug 04 '15 at 20:36
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This is an incomplete answer. I had used `Redirect` from mod_alias, and this doesn't seem to work together. So please add some info how this plays together with redirecting all other pages to *another* domain, as many others tell me that mod_alias is not the right choice for doing domain redirection. – Thomas Tempelmann Jun 03 '16 at 13:37
@ThomasTempelmann mod_alias and mod_rewrite do not play well together. I am not going to go into details as to why (because it is outside the scope of this question) but here is a link to another question that may help. http://stackoverflow.com/a/808089/588005 – PseudoNinja Jun 27 '16 at 18:56
This say uri that starts with "uploads" shouldn't be changed, and as no redirection is implicitly set, it can cause redirection loop. Why do you use braces here? – Edik Mkoyan Oct 12 '17 at 19:58
this breaks redirection of "uploads_b" – But those new buttons though.. Sep 02 '21 at 12:08

score 41 · Answer 3 · edited Nov 01 '12 at 07:39

41

I think you want this:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/uploads/
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

If you get 500 Internal Error then double-check that you have a space between } and ! on the second line.

edited Nov 01 '12 at 07:39

bahrep

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answered Aug 05 '10 at 11:03

Dominic Rodger

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How i wrote my condition was `RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/(app|app/.*)$` in order to get this to work. /app/ obviously being the folder i wanted to skip redirecting. – Ian LeBlanc Jul 25 '23 at 18:55

score 12 · Answer 4 · answered Apr 29 '16 at 18:13

12

A mod-alias based solution

Redirect all except a specific folder

Add the following line to your root/.htaccess :

RedirectMatch 301 ^/((?!uploads).*)$ http://newdomain.com/$1

This will redirect all pages (excluding /uploads/*) from your old domain to the newdomain.

answered Apr 29 '16 at 18:13

Amit Verma

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This works perfectly! Very useful, since I couldn't use mod_rewrite because was not enabled on a customer's server – lucaferrario Jun 05 '16 at 16:00
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Here is my solution for a virtual `http` host whose only purpose is to contain the `.well-known` directory for `certbot certonly --webroot` (let's encrypt): `RedirectMatch permanent ^/((?!\.well-known)(/.*)?)$ https://%{SERVER_NAME}/$1` – Tobias Oct 26 '18 at 14:34
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It's good to have this solution for cases where the RewriteEngine is not used; in (virtual) hosts which use RewriteRules as well, it is better to use the `RewriteCond` solution. – Tobias Oct 26 '18 at 14:37

Redirect site with .htaccess but exclude one folder

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