How to regex a url to redirect user

Question

Using the regex and the .htaccess file, I want to redirect users to a certain URL.

I want to redirect:

• http://www.example.com/* but not http://www.example.com/CDadmin/*

I have tried the following:

• http://www.example.com/CDadmin\/[*-^$CDadmin\/*]

But does not work when I test with regex101.

Answer 1

Since you've not clarified the specifics of your question, I'll make some assumptions:

• You wish to redirect to a different domain. eg. example.net
• example.net points to a different server.
• /CDadmin is a physical directory on the filesystem.

---

1. At the top of the .htaccess file in the document root of example.com, place the following:

   RewriteEngine On
   RewriteRule (.*) http://example.net/$1 [R=302,L]
   

   The only regex here is (.*) - which will basically redirect everything. (Read on...)

   This is a temporary (302) redirect. Change to a 301 if you want to make it permanent.

2. Then, in the .htaccess file in the /CDadmin subdirectory, simply enable the rewrite engine:

   RewriteEngine On
   

   This will effectively override the mod_rewrite directives in the parent .htaccess file, so nothing will be redirected when accessing /CDadmin/<something>.