Redirecting URLs to new domain using htaccess - wordpress

Question

I want to redirect some URLS on the old site to specific destination on the new site and the rest of the URLS to the home page. So far I have tried the following:
Use Redirect 301 /permalink https://newsite.com/permalink1/ for all the links that need to go to a specific page on the new site
For the rest, I added a generic rule
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^oldsite\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://newsite.com [R=301,L]
but this redirects all the pages to the home page of the new site.
Then I tried to replace point 2 above with RedirectMatch
RedirectMatch 301 .* https://newsite.com
but this tries to find an exact match on the new site. oldsite.com/xyz goes to https://newsite.com/xyz
Also, some of the old site URLs have parameters, oldsite.com/a=?b=123 how can I redirect such parameters to the new site homepage.

Answer 1

This probably is a straight forward approach:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^oldsite\.com$
RewriteRule ^/?permalink1old(/.*)$ https://newsite.com/permalink1new$1 [R=301,QSA]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^oldsite\.com$
RewriteRule ^/?permalink2old(/.*)$ https://newsite.com/permalink2new$1 [R=301,QSA]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^oldsite\.com$
RewriteRule ^ https://newsite.com/ [R=301]
So you redirect the old permalinks on the old host name to their new counterpart on the new host name, appending anything that might follow in the path of the initial old permalink and you append the query string to preserve arguments.
If the permalinks never contain anything additional in their paths then you can simplify those redirections, obviously:
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^oldsite\.com$
RewriteRule ^/?permalink1old/?$ https://newsite.com/permalink1new [R=301,QSA]
It is a good idea to start out with a 302 temporary redirection and only change that to a 301 permanent redirection later, once you are certain everything is correctly set up. That prevents caching issues while trying things out...
This implementation will work likewise in the http servers host configuration or inside a dynamic configuration file (".htaccess" file). Obviously the rewriting module needs to be loaded inside the http server and enabled in the http host. In case you use a dynamic configuration file you need to take care that it's interpretation is enabled at all in the host configuration and that it is located in the host's DOCUMENT_ROOT folder.
And a general remark: you should always prefer to place such rules in the http servers host configuration instead of using dynamic configuration files (".htaccess"). Those dynamic configuration files add complexity, are often a cause of unexpected behavior, hard to debug and they really slow down the http server. They are only provided as a last option for situations where you do not have access to the real http servers host configuration (read: really cheap service providers) or for applications insisting on writing their own rules (which is an obvious security nightmare).