RedirectMatch 301 rule conflicts with RewriteRule in htaccess

Question

I want to setup 301 redirects for requests from: /category/groceries-and-everyday/household/

Redirecting them to: /category/household/

I have the following rules set up for these requests:

# The following is to redirect old urls
RedirectMatch 301 ^/category/groceries-and-everyday/household/$ /category/household/

# This is our rewrite rule for SEO friendly URLs
RewriteRule ^category/(.*)/$ /category_pages/category.php?category_string=$1&rewrite=1 [NC,QSA]

Now when I load /category/groceries-and-everyday/household

I get bounced to: /category/household/?category_string=groceries-and-everyday/household&rewrite=1

I want this to bounce only to: /category/household/

Can somebody please explain why this behaviour is occurring and what changes I should make to achieve my desired result.

Many thanks

Answer 1

Can you try placing the 2nd rule before the 1st rule? Basically switch them.

Answer 2

You need to exclude the uri category/household from your rule :

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/category/household    RewriteRule ^category/(.*)/$ /category_pages/category.php?category_string=$1&rewrite=1 [NC,QSA]

otherwise your rewrite pattern ^category/(.*)/$ will also rewrite it to /category_pages/category.php?category_string=$1&rewrite=1

Answer 3

Slight adaption on Starkeen's answer.

Changing the second htaccess rule to have the following rewrite condition appears to work.

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/category/groceries-and-everyday/household/(.*)
RewriteRule ^category/(.*)/$ /category_pages/category.php?category_string=$1&rewrite=1 [NC,QSA]