How to bulk redirect URLs and replace one path segment?

Question

I have several URLs in a WordPress website I would like to rewrite and then make a 301 redirect.

URLs are of the form

www.example.com/prodotto/something-after

These URLs should be changed to

www.example.com/shop/something-after

Should I use URL rewrite rules in .htaccess? I have used this rule, but it doesn't work:

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
RewriteRule ^/?prodotto/(.*)$ http://www.example.com/shop/$1 [R=301,L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress'

Answer 1

You can use Apache Module mod_rewrite:

RewriteEngine ON
RewriteRule ^/?stringtochange/(.*)$ http://www.domainname.com/newstring/$1 [R=301,L]

The string after stringtochange is passed to the other url containing newstring in the $1 variable.

So for example, if you access www.example.com/stringtochange/cool-page.html it will get redirected to www.example.com/newstring/cool-page.html.