Apache htaccess rewrite ignoring Url Encoding

Question

I have just updated and I am currently setting all of the 301 Redirects in Apache's htaccess file. All redirects are working with the current format.

Redirect 301 /old+url+4343/ http://www.newsite.com/new-url-here/

But I've noticed a lot of old urls have some encoding - mainly ones with questions for titles. Apaches htaccess seems to ignore the encoding or just flop and not do anything. This, for example does not work;

Redirect 301 /old+question+title%3F/ http://www.newsite.com/new-question-title%3F/

In this case the %3F should be a question mark (?). I can visit the site normally if I copy and paste the url - that works just fine.

I have also tried setting the Charset in htaccess to see if that work but unfortunately it didnt, this was the code;

AddDefaultCharset UTF-8

Any ideas on why Apache would ignore url encoding and how I could overwrite that?

anubhava · Accepted Answer · 2015-04-14 09:07:28Z

1

Redirect directive is very limited, better to use RewriteRule for regex capabilities and flags like NE:

RewriteEngine On RewriteRule ^old\+question\+title\x3F/ /new-question-title\%3F/ [L,NC,NE,R=302]

answered Apr 14, 2015 at 9:07

anubhava

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3 Comments

anubhava Over a year ago

btw this is properly tested rule so I would appreciate a reason of downvote here

Alex Over a year ago

Hi @anubhava , thank you for the answer - unfortunately it doesn't seem to work (I have not downvoted by the way). The htaccess file seems to be ignoring the rule like before. Do I need to escape any slashes in the url for directories?

anubhava Over a year ago

Can you tell me full URL you used to great and location of this htaccess?

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