htaccess 301 redirect url without subdirectories-CodePudding

I'm trying to redirect this url:

https:///www.domain.com/courses/company/

to this one:

https:///www.domain.com/courses/

without also redirecting these:

https:///www.domain.com/courses/company/123/ https:///www.domain.com/courses/company/456/

I first tried this:

Redirect 301 /courses/company/ /courses/

but that also redirected the urls with the subdirectories.

Next I tried this:

Redirect 301 /courses/company/$ /courses/ ...because I thought the $ sign makes it match exactly that url.

But it didn't redirect anything.

Thanks!

CodePudding user response：

The issue with the Redirect directive is that it does not allow to use "regular expressions" as you tried to do. It only implements a simple prefix string matching approach.

Instead you'd have to use the RedirectMatch directive which does support such expressions:

RedirectMatch 301 ^/courses/company/?$ /courses/

See the documentation of the RedirectMatch directive.

Instead you could also use the more flexible rewrite module:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^/?courses/company/?$ courses/ [L,R=301]

And a general hint: it usually is a good idea to start out with a 302 temporary redirection. And to only change that to the 301 permanent redirection once everything works as intended. That prevents nasty caching issues for your clients.