Creating a Combined 301 Redirect in .htaccess

Question

We are being advised by our SEO agency to reduce the number of "chained" redirects we have.

So, for example: URL A - http://www.sitename.co.uk/SHOPPING-CATEGORIES/product_name

redirects to its https version (this is redirect 1, changing http to https)

the redirected url then redirects to the same url but all in lower case. So /SHOPPING-CATEGORIES/ becomes /shopping-categories/ (this is redirect 2, changing all urls to lower case as they are case sensitive)

the redirected url then redirects to URL B - https://www.sitename.co.uk/category/product_name (this is redirect 3 which removes the string /shopping-categories because this is no longer used in any url)

The above creates three separate redirects where what is actually wanted/needed is

URL A redirects to URL B

How can this be best achieved?

ADDITION: For clarity, this site is on a dedicated server and so it is not set up as a virtual host. Would all this be easier if were using NGINX?

Thanks very much for any input

Answer 1

If you have access to the VirtualHost config for the site, I think mod_rewrite would to be up to the task (when placed in said <VirtualHost> directive block):

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
  RewriteMap lc int:tolower 

  RewriteEngine On
  RewriteBase /

  RewriteRule [A-Z] ${lc:$0} [R=301]
  RewriteRule ^(.*)/shopping-categories/(.*)$ $1/category/$2 [R=301]
  RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !=on
  RewriteRule ^/?(.*) https://%{SERVER_NAME}/$1 [R=301]
</IfModule>

You may need to restart the Apache service to re-parse the VirtualHost configuration.

The RewriteMap directive maps a "to lowercase" behavior that's packaged with mod_rewrite, and is the only directive which absolutely must be in the <VirtualHost> directive block. All other directives could be placed in a .htaccess file or <Directory> directive block.

• RewriteRule [A-Z] ${lc:$0} [R=301]: If the requested URI-path contains an uppercase letter, apply the "to lowercase" map against the entire path and set up a permanent redirect.
• RewriteRule ^(.*)/shopping-categories/(.*)$ $1/category/$2 [R=301]: If the (now most definitely lowercase) URI-path contains "/shopping-categories/", replace it with "/category/" and set up a permanent redirect.
• RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !=on: If the request was not made using HTTPS...
  • RewriteRule ^(.*) https://%{SERVER_NAME}/$1 [R=301]: ...rewrite it using the HTTPS schema and set up a permanent redirect.

As no L or END flags are specified, Apache will test all rewrite rules and redirect only once if any rule was applied.

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ADDENDUM

The above directives should function equally as well in a server-level configuration (often httpd.conf). However, a VirtualHost block is preferable as it limits the changes to specifically to applicable requests (and thus resource overhead, behavior alterations, etc.). If your dedicated server does not appear to load a <VirtualHost> directive block for your website at any point you can easily implement one, even if you only plan on hosting one website on the server - this is a fairly standard practice and will not introduce any great complexity nor resource overhead to the webserver. Review the Apache documentation on Configuration Files and the VirtualHost examples for more information.