htaccess on wordpress network site - wordpress

Question

I have been tearing my hair out trying to solve an issue with htaccess on wordpress network site and i've gained so much information from stackoverflow in the past that i thought this would be the best place to ask. And apologies up front if im not posting correctly, it my first time.
here are the specifics of my setup (i cannot show or allow access to the site as i have agreed to an NDA of sorts)
there are 2 sites. the first is the root site "/" and the second is "/mythoughts/" as shown in network admin.
the "/mythoughts/" site is a replacement for an old custom blog someone built that uses variables in the url (custom)
the themes i am using are twentyten and roots (obviously roots doesnt do tidy url rewrites as its on a network setup)
the problem is this.
first "index.php is being removed from the url (its not a problem, but i think it might cause problems when i try to do other rewrites.)
second, the old site has variables in the urls in 2 instances.
the first instance is this
www.thesite.com/mythoughts/index.php?year=2010&month=9
which i need to rewrite as
www.thesite.com/mythoughts/2010/9
first of all the index.php is automatically removed
i have tried so many different things like
RewriteRule ^mythoughts/index.php?year=(.*)&month=(.*)$ mythoughts/$1/$2 [R=301,L]
does not work
the second instance is this
www.thesite.com/mythoughts/index.php?thought=101
which should rewrite to
www.thesite.com/mythoughts/title-of-the-post
i have a script that can match the url variable to the title of the post (and replace remove illegal characters) but the rewrites just do not work.
here is the htaccess i currently have (a bare wordpress)
# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
# uploaded files
RewriteRule ^([_0-9a-zA-Z-]+/)?files/(.+) wp-includes/ms-files.php?file=$2 [L]
# add a trailing slash to /wp-admin
RewriteRule ^([_0-9a-zA-Z-]+/)?wp-admin$ $1wp-admin/ [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
RewriteRule ^ - [L]
RewriteRule ^[_0-9a-zA-Z-]+/(wp-(content|admin|includes).*) $1 [L]
RewriteRule ^[_0-9a-zA-Z-]+/(.*\.php)$ $1 [L]
RewriteRule . index.php [L]
</IfModule>
#END WordPress
if anyone can help in pointing me in the right direction on this whole htaccess thing (which i have been struggling with for the last few weeks) i would be totally greatful.
thanks in advance guys and girls.

Answer 1

In the first instance, you have:
RewriteRule ^mythoughts/index.php?year=(.*)&month=(.*)$ mythoughts/$1/$2 [R=301,L]
But you can't match against the query string in a rewrite rule. Also, since you've got a rule to rewrite it back, you'll just create a redirect loop. You need to match against the actual request and not the URI.
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /mythoughts/index\.php\?year=([^&]*)&month=([^&\ ]*)
RewriteRule ^ mythoughts/%1/%2 [R=301,L]
As for:
i have a script that can match the url variable to the title of the post (and replace remove illegal characters) but the rewrites just do not work.
I don't see any script in your htaccess, maybe if you include the rule or the script.

Answer 2

after continuing my search even though i posted the question on stack (the great) overflow
here is what i ended up with.
in the first instance with the double url string the answer was
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]+\ /mythoughts/index\.php\?year=([0-9\-]+)&month=([0-9\-]+)\ HTTP/ [NC]
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ http://site.co.uk/mythoughts/%1/%2? [R=301,L]
so the initial url would have been
www.site.co.uk/mythoughts/index.php?year=2010&month=12
and the rewrite result is
www.site.co.uk/mythoughts/2010/12/
PERFECT !!!!
in the second instance, first to answer Jons question.
the script is written with php, it scans through the old database concatin strings from the id of the url variable, as example the variable in the url below
www.site.co.uk/mythoughts/index.php?though=21
this post or database entry has a title, and in wordpress the title is used in the permalink
so it would be
www.site.co.uk/mythoughts/sublime-and-powerful-outcomes
the script takes the id for the first condition of the rewrite, and puts the id in its place. The second part takes the title of the post and swaps spaces with dashes and special characters removed.
which results in the new url.
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]+\ /mythoughts/index\.php\?thought=21
\ HTTP/ [NC]
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ http://site.co.uk/mythoughts/sublime-and-powerful-outcomes? [R=301,L]
thanks to Jon for taking the time to answer this.
hope this helps someone