How do I add a 301 redirect to my Apache httpd.conf?

Nice writeup Dave and great explanation of a technical topic that is useful for webmasters.

BTW, I know that Alek guy and he can be pretty wierd and wacky ... he's always up to something entertaining! ;-)

Thanks for the information. Can you also mention how to set this redirection up on IIS for those of us paying for hosting with companies that don't use Apache?

Physio, that's documented at the http://www.404-error-page.com/ site. Check it out!

Dave, thanks for your very informative information on yourdomain.com to www.yourdomain.com 301 redirects through modifications to the httpd.conf file. I tested your approach on my server and it works exactly as advertised.

Question: I've been using the following .htaccess file rewrite instruction to accomplish (in theory) the same thing:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yourdomain\.com
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yourdomain.com/$1 [R=permanent,L]

Could you commment on the validy of my method versus modifying the httpd.conf file? Do both approaches generate exactly the same end result? Would one be more efficient than the other?

It seems to me that the httpd.conf approach would send a site visitor back to the Web and through all the domain name server lookups a second time to get bach to the www version of the URL. Is this true and would this basically slow everything down versus simply rewriting the address through the .htaccess directive?

Thanks for your thoughts.

Pat Riley

Are you using "former" and "latter" correctly?

Former would be:

Redirect 301 / http://www.askdavetaylor.com/

You say "the former works if you have multiple domains with the same IP address"

I think you've got it reversed.

Just a warning! A cut and paste of Dave Taylor's second bit of code will actually redirect your website to www.askdavetaylor.com :)

Yeah, I know that's obvious. But trust me, it's a bit startling to see type in your domain name and end up at dave's website :). D'Oh!

Wow, such simple instructions, and it worked first time. Many thanks Dave, I owe you a cuppa!

P.S. to check the http headers use:

http://www.seoconsultants.com/tools/headers.asp#Results

I have found your solution for multiple domains on one IP not working on apache 2.2.11. The virtual hosts overlap each other and some are ignored.

Instead, I have created one virtual host per redirect target as follow:

VirtualHost *:80
ServerName target-domain.com
ServerAlias domain1.com
ServerAlias www.domain1.com
ServerAlias domain2.com
ServerAlias www.domain2.com
Redirect 301 / http://www.target-domain.com/
/VirtualHost

VirtualHost *:80
ServerName target-domain2.com
ServerAlias domain3.com
ServerAlias www.domain3.com
ServerAlias domain4.com
ServerAlias www.domain4.com
Redirect 301 / http://www.target-domain2.com/
/VirtualHost

Add the <> around the Virtualhost lines, for some reason it was removed from the comment

When I use the first method

Redirect 301 / http://www.askdavetaylor.com/
in httpd.conf I get a redirect loop.

Second method doesn't redirect my site at all.
I have searched the web and tried many different methods but cant get it to redirect with a loop.

Here is the httpd.conf file:

Order allow,deny
Allow from all
DirectoryIndex index.php
AllowOverride None
AddDefaultCharset Off

php_value memory_limit 228M
php_value max_execution_time 18000
php_flag magic_quotes_gpc off
php_flag session.auto_start off
php_flag suhosin.session.cryptua off
php_flag zend.ze1_compatibility_mode Off
php_flag zlib.output_compression on

RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule .* - [E=HTTP_AUTHORIZATION:%{HTTP:Authorization}]
RewriteRule ^(index.php/)?minify/([^/]+)(/.*.(js|css))$ lib/minify/m.php?f=$3&d;=$2
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/(media|skin|js)/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-l
RewriteRule .* index.php [L]

SecFilterEngine Off
SecFilterScanPOST Off

ExpiresDefault "access plus 1 year"
SetOutputFilter DEFLATE
BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html
BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4\.0[678] no-gzip
BrowserMatch \bMSIE !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html
SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \.(?:gif|jpe?g|png)$ no-gzip dont-vary
Header append Vary User-Agent env=!dont-vary

SSLOptions StdEnvVars

ExpiresActive On
ExpiresDefault A0

ExpiresDefault A29030400
Header append Cache-Control "public"

ExpiresDefault A1209600
Header append Cache-Control "public"

ExpiresDefault A604800
Header append Cache-Control "proxy-revalidate"

ExpiresActive Off
Header set Cache-Control "private, no-cache, no-store, proxy-revalidate, no-transform"
Header set Pragma "no-cache"

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