.htaccess Redirect Generator

How to use the .htaccess redirect generator

1. Choose your Server: Apache (.htaccess) or Nginx, then the Redirect type: 301 – permanent or 302 – temporary.
2. In Page redirects, write one redirect per line: the old path, a space, then the new URL, for example /old-page.html /new-page/. A tab, a comma or -> also work, and you can paste full old URLs or existing Redirect 301 /a /b lines.
3. Optionally enter Your domain (for example example.com) so that page redirects point straight to the final address.
4. Under Canonical address, tick Force HTTPS and pick Force www, Remove www or Leave www as is. Under Trailing slash, choose whether to add or remove it.
5. If the whole site moved, fill in Move the whole domain with the Old domain and the New address, and keep Keep the path ticked so every page lands on its equivalent.
6. Read the Checks, then Copy or Download the rules. Use Load an example to see a complete configuration.

How the generated rules work

For Apache, the tool writes mod_rewrite rules, starting with a single RewriteEngine On. Each page becomes a RewriteRule whose pattern starts with ^/?, so it works both in a .htaccess file (where the leading slash is removed) and in a <VirtualHost> block. Dots, brackets, plus signs and other regular-expression characters in your paths are escaped, and a space becomes \x20. In the new URL, $ and % are escaped because Apache would read them as back-references, and the NE flag stops Apache from encoding the URL a second time.

A RewriteRule never sees the query string. When an old address contains one, such as /product.php?id=42, the tool adds a RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^id=42$ line and the QSD flag, so the old parameters are dropped instead of being copied to the new page.

The rules are ordered to avoid needless hops: domain move first, then page redirects, then the trailing slash, then HTTPS and www. HTTPS and www are handled by one rule, so http://www.example.com goes to https://example.com in a single redirect. When your domain is known, page and slash redirects already point to the final HTTPS address.

For Nginx, HTTPS, www and domain moves become separate server blocks with return 301, and page redirects become rewrite lines to paste inside your main server block. They run before location matching, so they also win over the trailing-slash rule. A ? at the end of a target stops Nginx from appending the old query string when it should not.

Checks performed

• A page that redirects to itself, or two pages that redirect to each other (a loop that ends in “too many redirects”).
• Chains such as A → B → C: point A straight to C, because every extra hop slows visitors down and wastes crawl budget.
• The same old address listed twice, where only the first rule would apply.
• A target that is neither an absolute URL nor a path starting with /, or an http:// or wrong-www target on your own domain.
• A trailing-slash setting that would redirect a target again or send it back to its source.