301 Redirect vs Rewrite

Question

I have a site that was hosted by someone else all the web pages were .html files. I am now hosting the site and have changed it to a wordpress site. The domain has not changed but obviously all the pages have. What is the best way to redirect all the .html pages to the main url?

Solution

301 Redirect in an .htaccess does not require the mod_rewrite library. It's a much simpler way to redirect, but it doesn't have the flexibility and power you get using the Rewrite rules. If you have a 1-1 mapping with explicit urls you can use the Redirect:

Redirect 301  /path/file.html http://new.site.com/newpath.php

If you're trying to do wild card matching of a number of similar patterns using regular expressions you'll need to use Rewrite.

RewriteRule ^(.*).html$ http://new.site.com/$1.php [R=301,NC,L]

Here's a pretty good overview of the 2 methods: http://www.ksl-consulting.co.uk/301-redirect-examples.html

Comments

[Boris_yo]

What if I want to redirect WWW and non-WWW version? Can I do this without RewriteRule or mod_rewrite library?

[Ray]

@Boris_yo no, you need rewrite conditions if you're trying to catch the protocol http vs. https

[Boris_yo]

Not really a protocol but WWW and non-WWW

[Ray]

@Boris_yo you can't catch domian / host names either with Redirect, only a RewriteRule with a RewriteCondition: RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^foo.com[nc] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.foo.com/$1 [r=301,nc]