Rewriting multiple URL's with .htaccess

Question

I need some help with rewriting different URL's for my website. It is a multilanguage site so that complicates it a bit. I have managed to get some things work. This is what my code does so far:

• Define the RewriteBase (because localhost and production server have different bases)
• Rewrite www.mysite.com to www.mysite.com/en/ (or a different language, depending on 'lang' parameter)
• Redirect non-www to www
• Remove index.php from URL

What I want

But I have two problems with the code:

• It redirects to http://www.example.com/en/?lang=en . But I don't want that last parameter and I can't figure out with my basic skills how to hide the 'lang'. How to prevent adding that parameter to the URL?
• When I go to, lets say, http://www.example.com/?page=news the /en/ is not added to the URL. How to fix that? It should ALWAYS, in every, url, add the language after the domain.

Besides that, I would like to have two additional rewriterules but I don't want my htaccess to be a mess. So I hope someone can point me in the right direction. What is the best way to do this in my htaccess?

• The parameter 'page' contains the page that is displaying and should be rewrited: http://www.example.com/en/index.php?page=info -> http://www.example.com/en/info/ (I already figured out how to hide the index.php, see code below)

• My News page ( http://www.example.com/en/index.php?page=news&id=2452&news=lorem-ipsum ) should be rewrited to http://www.example.com/en/news/2452/lorem-ipsum/ .

And for all of these rules: the URL should end with /, if it doesn't, it should add it: so http://www.example.com/en/news -> http://www.example.com/en/news/ .

This is my code now:

Options +FollowSymlinks 
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /

# SET REWRITEBASE VARIABLE
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !=localhost
RewriteRule ^ - [E=FRB:/]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} =localhost
RewriteRule ^ - [E=FRB:/www.example.com/]


## REWRITE FOR LANGUAGE ##
# empty url -> redirect to en/
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !lang=(en|de)
RewriteRule ^$ %{ENV:FRB}en/ [R=301,L]

# url is ONLY '/en' or '/de' -> redirect to /en/ or /de/ (adding slash)
RewriteRule ^(en|nl)$  %{ENV:FRB}$1/ [R=301,L]

# now all urls have en/ de/ -> parse them
RewriteRule ^(en|nl)/(.*)$  %{ENV:FRB}$2?lang=$1&%{query_STRING} [L]



## REWRITE NON-WWW TO WWW (EXCEPT ON LOCALHOST) ##
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !=localhost
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^(.*)\.example\.com$ [NC] 
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]



## REMOVE INDEX.PHP FROM URL ##
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?$1 [L,QSA]
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,}\s(.*)/index\.php [NC]
RewriteRule ^ %1 [R=301,L]

Thank you very much for helping me out! If you have questions, please let me know.

Answer 1

Have it like this:

Options +FollowSymlinks 
RewriteEngine On

# SET REWRITEBASE VARIABLE
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !=localhost
RewriteRule ^ - [E=FRB:/]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} =localhost
RewriteRule ^ - [E=FRB:/www.example.com/]

## REWRITE FOR LANGUAGE ##
# empty url -> redirect to en/
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !lang=(en|de)
RewriteRule ^$ %{ENV:FRB}en/ [R=301,L]

## REMOVE INDEX.PHP FROM URL ##
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,}\s(.*)/index\.php [NC]
RewriteRule ^ %1 [R=301,L,NE]

## REWRITE NON-WWW TO WWW (EXCEPT ON LOCALHOST) ##
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !(^www\.|localhost) [NC]
RewriteRule ^ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L,NE]

# url is ONLY '/en' or '/de' -> redirect to /en/ or /de/ (adding slash)
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
RewriteRule ^(.+?[^/])$ %{REQUEST_URI}/ [L,R=302,NE]

# handle /en/news/2452/lorem-ipsum/
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,}\s(.*[a-z]{2})/?\?page=([^\s&]+)&id=([^\s&]+)&news=([^\s&]+) [NC]
RewriteRule ^ %1/%2/%3/%4/? [R=302,L,NE]

RewriteRule ^(en|nl)/(news)/(\d+)/([\w-]+)/?$ index.php?lang=$1&page=$2&id=$3&news=$4 [L,QSA]

# handle /en/info
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,}\s(.*[a-z]{2})/?\?page=([^\s&]+) [NC]
RewriteRule ^ %1/%2/? [R=302,L,NE]

RewriteRule ^(en|nl)/([\w-]+)/?$ index.php?lang=$1&page=$2 [L,QSA]

# now all urls have en/ OR de/ -> parse them
RewriteRule ^(en|nl)/(.*)$  %{ENV:FRB}$2?lang=$1 [L,QSA]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.+)$ index.php?$1 [L,QSA]

Answer 2

Try removing the R=301 on the RewriteRule.

With that command you're telling the server it should answer with a 301 error code and gives the new url to the browser. The browser will take that URL and will do a new GET.

Without the R=301 the server will do the "magic" internally ;-)