How can I redirect a PDF to home page?

Question

I'm trying to redirect from an URL like this:

https://example.com/images/qr/brochure.pdf

to the home page of the site: https://example.com

I tried using this code in a .htaccess file, and added the file in the same folder as the brochure:

RewriteEngine On RewriteRule ^ brochure.pdf$ https://example.com/[R=301,L,NC]

but this only makes the brochure link act as if it doesn't exist but doesn't redirect it to home.

I also tried a couple of other codes that generate a 500 error on the page, so this is the closest I have gotten.

Also, if there is any other solution for this problem let me know, it doesn't have to be exactly on .htaccess

Answer 1

Place a new .htaccess file in the root of your documents folder within your web server or edit the existing one if you already created one.

For each PDF file, place a line in the .htaccess file with the following syntax:

Redirect 301 /currentfilepath/some-document.pdf http://example.com/index.php

The Redirect directive requires mod_alias to be loaded (it normally is on, but check).

The 301 indicates that this is a permanent redirection (in contrast to 302, which would be a temporary redirection). After that is the old path of the document (relative to the location of the .htaccess file). And the last argument is the new site location.

Restart the webserver after adjusting the .htaccess file, as it is most likely cached.

Hope this works for you.

Answer 2

RewriteEngine On RewriteRule ^ brochure.pdf$ https://example.com/[R=301,L,NC]

This is basically correct, except you have made (what looks like) a series of typos with the spacing/whitespace:

• Each directive needs to be on a separate line. The above will do nothing since everything after On is simply ignored.
• ^ brochure.pdf$ - There should be no space after ^. Spaces are argument delimiters in Apache config files, so this is now two arguments, not one. It should be ^brochure\.pdf$ (the literal dot should also be backslash-escaped, but this is not an "error" as such).
• https://example.com/[R=301,L,NC] - You are missing a space before the flags argument. As noted above, spaces are argument delimiters. This would otherwise be seen as one argument and result in a malformed redirect (resulting in a 404).

Additionally,

• R=301 - I would question whether this should be a 301 "permanent" redirect. This will be cached persistently by anyone requesting this URL, even after the redirect directive has been removed.

So, bringing the above points together, it should be written as follows if you are using the /images/qr/.htaccess file:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^brochure\.pdf$ https://example.com/ [NC,R=302,L]

Although, would a more meaningful "custom" 404 not be preferable? A 404 would generally make more sense to any user that happens to follow that link.