How to redirect all pages of site A, including those with query strings, to homepage of site B

Question

I want to redirect all pages of SiteA to homepage of SiteB.

I used this code in SiteA's .htaccess file:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    RewriteEngine on
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://SiteB.tld/ [R=301,L]
</IfModule>

The code works perfectly, but not for URLs with Question Mark, such as

https://SiteA.tld/?action=dayview&calendar=1&year=2000&month=01&day=01

This pages will get 404 Not Found and wouldn't redirect to SiteB's hompage.

What changes should I make in the Redirection code?

Answer 1

You should add the "query string discard" or QSD flag to your rewrite rule:

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://SiteB.tld/ [R=301,QSD,L]

From the documentation:

When the requested URI contains a query string, and the target URI does not, the default behavior of RewriteRule is to copy that query string to the target URI. Using the [QSD] flag causes the query string to be discarded.

This flag is available in version 2.4.0 and later.

Using [QSD] and [QSA] together will result in [QSD] taking precedence.

If the target URI has a query string, the default behavior will be observed - that is, the original query string will be discarded and replaced with the query string in the RewriteRule target URI.