.htaccess to serve specific pages with prefix path in front of it - wordpress

Question

I need to serve these pages:
/category/*
As
/shop/category/*
I need the url to have /shop in front of /category/ and it needs to handle all nested path structures within category also.
How can I do this via .htaccess preferred?
There is also a /shop/ page that I do not want disturbed by any .htaccess edits.
So, I just need to serve /category/ pages with the url having /shop/category/ instead, is this possible via .htaccess?
So I'm a beginner here in .htaccess rewrites, but have tried this:
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^category/$
RewriteRule ^shop/category/(.*)$ category/$1 [L]
It doesn't do anything tho...
Also tried this:
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^category/(.*)
RewriteRule ^$ /shop/category/$1? [R,L]
Again, no effect on anything.
I am using Wordpress, so it seems it has some power over my rewrite rule perhaps?? Anyways, here is my entire .htaccess file.
# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress
RewriteRule ^shop/category/(.*)$ category/$1 [R,L]
Have tried the following within the init wordpress action also:
add_rewrite_rule('^/shop/category(?:/.*)?', '/category/$matches[1]', 'top');
No luck on this.
Ok, seems that I might be getting somewhere here...
The following add_rewrite_rule below matches only the first category, but doesn't match for child categories:
add_rewrite_rule('shop/category/?([^/]*)', 'index.php?product_category=$matches[1]', 'top');
The custom taxonomy that I am using is product_category, not wordpress default category since I don't want my product categories mixed with post categories. So, I just need to figure out now, how to match all paths (which include child categories), for example:
/category/gelest-inc/silanes-silicones/
silanes-silicones is a child of gelest-inc, how to capture this in the rewrite rule above also?

Answer 1

If I understand your question correctly following .htaccess should serve your requirements:
# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^category(?:/.*)?$ /shop/$0 [R=301,NC,NE,L]
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress

Answer 2

Your rule says if HTTP_HOST is catagory/ then rewritehomepage (^$ matches an empty uri eg : /) to /shop/catagory. Your RewriteCond never meets as you are matching against HTTP_HOST header using URI in pattern.
If you want to redirect /catagory/ to /shop/catagory , you can use
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^catagory/([^/]*)/?$ /shop/catagory/$1 [L,R]

Answer 3

You have the WordPress rules, and after the rules comes the "shop" rule.
When the shop URI is not a real file or directory, requests for it will already be handled by the WordPress rules and rewritten to index.php. Apache then iterates a second time with index.php, but it doesn't match the shop rule and never redirects or rewrites.
To make this work the shop rule must come first
RewriteRule ^shop/category/(.*)$ category/$1 [R,L]
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
Now it depends on what you want to achieve, redirect from
RewriteRule ^shop/category/(.*)$ category/$1 [R,L]
or to shop/category
RewriteRule ^category/(.*)$ shop/category/$1 [R,L]