: How to redirect URLs with percent encoded characters and query strings? I have these URLs: http://www.example.com/example.html%20text-decoration:%20none%E2%80%9D%3Eexample.com%3C%20%3C/i%3E%3C/span%3E%3Cbr%3E%3Cbr%3E%3Cbr%3E%3Ctable%20bgcol

@Jamie184

Redirect (mod_alias) matches against the %-decoded path. Also, you can't match the query string with this directive, so it's best to use mod_rewrite for both these redirects (which also matches against the %-decoded path). It's never a good idea to mix both mod_alias and mod_rewrite directives.

At the top of .htaccess, enable the rewrite engine...

RewriteEngine On


For "link 1" I assume we don't need to match the entire mashed up link, just matching the first bit eg. <space>text-decoration should be sufficient I would have thought? Note that since we are matching against the %-decoded path, a space is literally a space (), not %20 - but a space needs to be backslash escaped in the regex ().

RewriteRule ^example.html text-decoration /examindex/ [R=301,L]


For "link 2" we need to use the RewriteCond directive in order to match the query string. The query string is removed from the URL-path before pattern matching (which also applies to a mod_alias Redirect).

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} =p=2343543
RewriteRule ^examindex/$ /examindex/? [R=301,L]


The trailing ? on the substitution is required to remove the query string. (Or you could use the QSD flag instead on Apache 2.4+)

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