First off, here is the .htaccess file

redirect 301 /index.shtml http://www.airandaqua.com/sunshop

redirect 301 /shower.shtml http://airandaqua.com/shower%20water%20filters.shtml

redirect 301 /aqq-4100%20shower%20water%20filters.shtml http://www.airandaqua.com/shower_water_filter.shtml

redirect 301 /shower%20water%20filters.shtml http://www.airandaqua.com/benefits_shower_water_filter.shtml

redirect 301 /water%20contamination%20hazards.shtml http://www.airandaqua.com/whats_in_your_water.shtml

redirect 301 /sunshop/html/AQ-4100-Aquasana-Shower-Filter.html http://www.airandaqua.com/sunshop/html/Shower-Water-Filter.html

redirect 301 /aquasana%20water%20filters%20catalog.shtml http://www.airandaqua.com/water_purification_systems.shtml

redirect 301 /doesnotexist.html http://airandaqua.com/info.shtml

What is happening is that any of the URL's that include the %20 will not redirect....  I have no clue why... all of the other URL's will redirect but if the URL has the %20 in it it will not attempt a redirect!

Any clue as to why this is happening or how I can overcome this problem?

to test it, go to (redirect 301 /doesnotexist.html h*ttp://airandaqua.com/info.shtml) airandaqua.com/doesnotexist.html[/mono] and it WILL redirect to info.shtml   -  however (redirect 301 /aqq-4100%20shower%20water%20filters.shtml h*ttp://www.airandaqua.com/shower_water_filter.shtml) airandaqua.com/aqq-4100%20shower%20water%20filters.shtml  won't redirect to http://www.airandaqua.com/shower_water_filter.shtml !????

wow, no replies in a few days!? I have posted this same question on about three other webmaster forums also and no one seems to know the answer to this... Maybe I will have to write a tutorial once I figure it out lol....

I was able to get it to work, but you need to have mod_rewrite available...try this for the url's with spaces in them:

RewriteEngine On



RewriteRule ^/aquasana\ water\ filters\ catalog.shtml$ http://www.airandaqua.com/water_purification_systems.shtml [R=301,L]

Hmm I just added that line to the bottom of the file so it looks like this:

# -FrontPage-



IndexIgnore .htaccess */.??* *~ *# */HEADER* */README* */_vti*



<Limit GET POST>

order deny,allow

deny from all

allow from all

</Limit>

<Limit PUT DELETE>

order deny,allow

deny from all

</Limit>

AuthName www.airandaqua.com

AuthUserFile /home/airandaq/public_html/_vti_pvt/service.pwd

AuthGroupFile /home/airandaq/public_html/_vti_pvt/service.grp



redirect 301 /index.shtml http://www.airandaqua.com/sunshop

redirect 301 /shower.shtml http://airandaqua.com/shower%20water%20filters.shtml

redirect 301 "/aqq-4100%20shower%20water%20filters.shtml" http://www.airandaqua.com/shower_water_filter.shtml

redirect 301 /shower%20water%20filters.shtml http://www.airandaqua.com/benefits_shower_water_filter.shtml

redirect 301 /water%20contamination%20hazards.shtml http://www.airandaqua.com/whats_in_your_water.shtml

redirect 301 /sunshop/html/AQ-4100-Aquasana-Shower-Filter.html http://www.airandaqua.com/sunshop/html/Shower-Water-Filter.html

redirect 301 /aquasana%20water%20filters%20catalog.shtml http://www.airandaqua.com/water_purification_systems.shtml



RewriteEngine On



RewriteRule ^/aquasana\ water\ filters\ catalog.shtml$ http://www.airandaqua.com/water_purification_systems.shtml [R=301,L]

still not working though.... does "rewriteengine on" turn the mod script on that you were talking about or do I need to do something else?  Thanks for the help already

Wait a second . . .  are you using file names with spaces in them???   The internet mafia is going to send it's "best prectices" squad over to your house in the middle of the night and make you an offer you can't refuse!

texxs wrote:

Wait a second . . .  are you using file names with spaces in them???   The internet mafia is going to send it's "best prectices" squad over to your house in the middle of the night and make you an offer you can't refuse!

hahaha, well.... an ex co-worker who knew squat about designing websites or SEO did a little research and decided to gain access to the site and change all the filenames, "for SEO purposes".  Well he screwed us out of our google PR5 ranking as well as even being indexed by google because all the search engines got after that was 404 errors and I also saw our traffic drop dramatically.  I have been spening the past 6+ months trying to fix his mistake and I still have URL's with spaces in them, now that I have learned about 301 redirects though I figured I can now change all the URL's...... until I hit this wall....  doh!  how the heck do I 301 a URL with spaces in it!?!  *cries*

Dude!  That poor bastard really screwed things up! 

Since you're rankings are in the pot anyway, why not just find everything with a space in it, replace it with a dash "-"?  Then you can forget the 301's and just remake a gogle sitemap and site navigation and go from there?

Have you tried creating a blank file with one of the original file names just to view it and see if it has any Pagerank?  Probably, won't be any but if you can identifiy even a few key pages like that and restore them, this may help with restoring your rankings faster.

Have you checked with your hosting provider to see if you can actually use the .htaccess ??
Sounds like the server may not be set up properly...

How do you link over to the pages, with spaces escaped (the %20 included) or with just the spaces?

SiteReference wrote:

How do you link over to the pages, with spaces escaped (the %20 included) or with just the spaces?

well when he changed all the filename's frontpage automatically fixed all the links on the site pointing to the page, the %20 is included in those links where needed.  I have contacted my host and no response yet. cry....

also, this dude changed the filenames probably 6 months to a year ago.  I don't remember what the old pages URL's were   anyways after google found them to be 404 they stopped indexing all of my site so I am screwed there even if I did find the old URL's

thegyspsy wrote:

Have you checked with your hosting provider to see if you can actually use the .htaccess ??
Sounds like the server may not be set up properly...

Yes I am able to access the file and manipulate it if that is what you mean?  can someone tell me about mod_rewrite that SiteReference was telling me about?  I have tried to use his code in the htaccess file to no avail... if I can figure out how to turn on this mod_rewrite though maybe it will work?

You can test mod_rewrite pretty easily on your site...

Create two files:

test1.html
test2.html

In test1.html, put in "This is the file test1.html"
In test2.html, put in "This is the file test2.html"

Now open your .htaccess file, and use this code:

RewriteEngine On



RewriteRule ^test1.html$ test2.html [L]

Now try to go to test1.html and see what pops up on the screen.  If you are seeing the contents of test2.html, then all is working for mod_rewrite.

Mod_rewrite is a simple way to change your URLs without changing your file names on the server.  This helps in creating 'SE friendly' URLs.

ok contacted my host support:

James: do you happen to know... is "mod_rewrite" enabled on the server?
James: a friend told me something baout this and how I might be able to use that to redirect the URL's with %20 in them...?
Stoney: Mod_rewrite is enabled on our server you can use that, but he suggests using the following html redirect in the head on your pages: <meta http-equiv="Refresh" content="0; url=/file.html">.
Stoney: Unfortunately, the spaces will not work.
Stoney: I apologize for the inconvenience I'm sure this will cause.
Stoney: Although he says that this will be better for your search engine/stats tracking.


well first off... I tried to use

RewriteEngine On



RewriteRule ^test1.html$ test2.html [L]

but it didnt seem to work so i tried

RewriteEngine On



RewriteRule ^/test1.html$ http://airandaqua.com/test2.html [L]

but neither seemed to work!?

Now I COULD just go ahead and use those refresh redirects but as far as I know that hurt my google ranking and is another one of the reasons I stopped being indexed ( Another problem I had was that i was redirecting people from airandaqua.com/index.shtml to airandaqua.com/sunshop/index.php but not by 301 but by using a redirect in the header like he suggested... until I learned how to do 301 and also that redirecting that way can be seen by search engines as SPAM tricks...?)

Should I just use the header redirects on all the pages with %20 in them?

Thanks for the help so far everyone

I would recommend strongly against doing header redirects.  You changed file locations, so you need to tell google that - header refreshes do not properly inform the SE's about your moved files.

On the test for mod rewrite, try adding this:

Options +FollowSymLinks

just below the RewriteEngine On...

If this doesn't work, we still have options, but they are getting thin...

hmm that not working either...

I'm having another really annoying problem with this...

everytime I upload the new htaccess my frontpage extensions are getting messed up or something.  I have to keep uninstalling/installing  the extensions.  After I upload new htaccess I cant access the site through frontpage... grrrr lol....  not a big deal once I get this handled i wont need to mess with it anymore... *sigh*

Armbarsalot wrote:

First off, here is the .htaccess file

Code:

redirect 301 /index.shtml http://www.airandaqua.com/sunshop

redirect 301 /shower.shtml http://airandaqua.com/shower%20water%20filters.shtml

redirect 301 /aqq-4100%20shower%20water%20filters.shtml http://www.airandaqua.com/shower_water_filter.shtml

redirect 301 /shower%20water%20filters.shtml http://www.airandaqua.com/benefits_shower_water_filter.shtml

redirect 301 /water%20contamination%20hazards.shtml http://www.airandaqua.com/whats_in_your_water.shtml

redirect 301 /sunshop/html/AQ-4100-Aquasana-Shower-Filter.html http://www.airandaqua.com/sunshop/html/Shower-Water-Filter.html

redirect 301 /aquasana%20water%20filters%20catalog.shtml http://www.airandaqua.com/water_purification_systems.shtml

redirect 301 /doesnotexist.html http://airandaqua.com/info.shtml

What is happening is that any of the URL's that include the %20 will not redirect....  I have no clue why... all of the other URL's will redirect but if the URL has the %20 in it it will not attempt a redirect!

I literally just figured out my redirects today... turns out the tech staff for my server didn't know a damn thing.

To clarify... You DON'T want to point to the url's with spaces in them???

According to the second line, it looks like you're pointing to a file with spaces in it.

The first line looks like you're redirecting from the index to the sunshop directory. Guess I'd have to see the whole site to understand that logic....

Also, just to make darn sure - Did you get the file named properly. If you made it in notepad, you could've named the file .htaccess.txt instead of just .htaccess

If thats the problem, just use an ftp client and rename the file.

MrStitch wrote:

I literally just figured out my redirects today... turns out the tech staff for my server didn't know a damn thing.

To clarify... You DON'T want to point to the url's with spaces in them???

According to the second line, it looks like you're pointing to a file with spaces in it.

The first line looks like you're redirecting from the index to the sunshop directory. Guess I'd have to see the whole site to understand that logic....

Also, just to make darn sure - Did you get the file named properly. If you made it in notepad, you could've named the file .htaccess.txt instead of just .htaccess

If thats the problem, just use an ftp client and rename the file.

I want anyone going to the pages with spaces in them to be redirected to my new pages that dont include the spaces.

I redirect from main page to sunshop dir because the sunshop main page has the sidebars (shopping cart, whats new, currency selector etc.) whereas in my airandaqua.com/index.shtml I cannot get it to include my php sidebars, footer and header.  Is there a way for me to do some kind of server side include to get portions of my php to show in an html page?  if so I can fix that and I would not need a redirect!

a page inside the shopping cart- http://www.airandaqua.com
a page outside the shopping cart without the sidebars - http://airandaqua.com/calutech%20UV%20A … ndex.shtml (<-- need to fix the filename there as well!)

Yes file is named properly .htaccess

wish I could get this... I think I am just going to transfer the code from all the pages into new pages, make sure all the in-site links point to new pages, and just leave up the old ones....  *back to work*