Why would I ever want to use a 302 redirect?
Well, for starters, 302 redirects are temporary redirection commands designed to notify user or, more specifically, search engines that the link being used for redirection could be modified in the future.
Plain and simple, it’s not a permanent decision. It’s simply a temporary decision that is likely to change based on various factors known or unknown at the time of redirection.
There are are number of ways to create a 302 redirect using .htaccess file, and I show a few using the Redirect method and mod_rewrite method.
One of the first ways to create a 302 redirect is redirecting a file from one website to another website (see below):
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Redirect /old-file.html http://www.kickstartcommerce.com/temp-file.html Redirect "/old-file.html" "http://www.kickstartcommerce.com/temp-file.html" |
Just as you can have 302 redirects for files, you can also 302 redirect directories (see below):
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Redirect /old-directory http://www.kickstartcommerce.com/temp-directory/ Redirect "/old-directory" "http://www.kickstartcommerce.com/temp-directory/" |
But don’t stop at 302 redirects for files and directories, entire websites can be 302 redirected (see below):
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Redirect / http://www.kickstartcommerce.com/ Redirect "/" "http://www.kickstartcommerce.com/“ |
You can also 302 redirect files and directories to subdomains (see below):
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Redirect /old/ http://new.kickstartcommerce.com/ Redirect “/old/" "http://new.kickstartcommerce.com/“ |
But what about subdomains? Yes, subdomains too can be 302 redirected using the following:
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RewriteEngine on RewriteBase / RewriteCond %{HTTP_POST} ^old\.kickstartcommerce\.com [NC] RewriteRule (.*) http://new.kickstartcommerce.com/$1 [L,R] |
Now the last example uses a bit more code unlike previous examples.
The coding method and syntax is know as mod_rewrite module, and is an rewriting engine that allows for rule-based, regular-expression parsing of requested URLS on the fly.
The RewriteEngine on command is used to enable the mod_rewrite module although most module installations are set to enabled by default.
You can have and match as many RewriteCond as you would like.
Also, you can apply as many RewriteRule rules as you would like, or as many that make sense.
To limit the number of RewriteRules and RewriteCond, it’s highly suggested you learn about regular expressions, exceptions and cases, and flags.
There is one more directive to know about and that’s the use of the RedirectMatch. Simply put, let’s say you wanted to match against a file or URL-path, then using RedirectMatch makes the most since.
For example, you want to change .php files to now have .html at the end. Here’s the syntax using RedirectMatch directive:
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RedirectMatch (.*)\.php$ http://kickstartcommerce.com$1.html RedirectMatch “(.*)\.php$” “http://kickstartcommerce.com$1.html” |
The one thing to note about the expressions above is that you’ll need to learn about regular expressions, and how to use effectively use various expressions to achieve the desired outcome.
Can you think of any other 302 redirects you’d like to see covered?