Using .htaccess to redirect an .html to a .php

Question

I have 5 wordpress sites that all use the same encoded template. That encoded template (which I can't change) calls on a file called "2012.orange.html" with some basic html layout code. I have created a "my_template.php" in my server's "/home/" directory and another "2012_orange.php" file in my template directory that "includes" "my_template.php" from the "/home/".

My goal is for my "my_template.php" file in the "/home/" directory to be used to control the layout of the 5 different sites, but I can't figure out how to get the specific .html file to call the .php instead.

I did something similar with my 'robots.txt' using the following code, and it works well:

# BEGIN - Robots Rewrite
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^robots\.txt$ robots.php [L]
## END - Robots Rewrite

But I can't get this to work...I am getting no html layout:

# BEGIN - Template Rewrite
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^2012\.orange\.html$ 2012_orange.php [L]
## END - Template Rewrite

And then again, the 2012_orange.php would just contain the following include:

<?php include ('/home/my_template.php'); ?>

Any idea on how to get .htaccess to redirect to the .php version of the file when the original .html is called?

Answer 1

.htaccess is only used in the HTTP request to redirect an url . Once the script is running, including templates is not incluenced in any way by .htaccess, since you're including files, not urls.

Answer 2

can you type 2012_orange.php file path from the public folder?

Your code seems working fine for 2012_orange.php in the root directory,

if you having 2012_orange.php file inside another folder you have to change path like home/2012_orange.php

# BEGIN - Template Rewrite
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^2012\.orange\.html$ home/2012_orange.php [L]
## END - Template Rewrite