301 Redirect Help.

OK I asked this on DP before I had the epiphany that "hey... wouldn't it be smarter to just ask on the forum where the 301/.htaccess experts are?"

So yeah I converted my basketball forum from IPB to VB.

I have a few URLs that point to team specific forums that I want to 301 redirect because i know they have a lot of backlinks.

I tried redirect 301 /index.php?showforum=4 /forumdisplay.php?f=263

But that just gives me a 500 Internal Server Error.

When I add the http to the destination URL the 500 error goes away but it just ignores the redirect. redirect 301 /index.php?showforum=4 http:/www.hoopstalk.net/forumdisplay.php?f=263

I know my server supports RewriteRule in .htacccess because I have my domains 301'd to www.mydomain.com like onlyriddles.com which is on the same server.

So what am I doing wrong with the redirect 301 and how can I fix it? Or how do I do it with rewriterule?

Any help is MUCH appreciated!

Hello George,

you can use the following in .htaccess:

Code:

RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^showforum=4$
RewriteRule ^index\.php http://www.domain.com/forumdisplay.php?f=264

THANK YOU!

That's the first code I've tried that actually works.

Is there any way to do it so it redirects as a 301 redirect for SEO purposes?

Ahh nevermind I figured it out. I added this to the end of the last line [R=301,L]

Yes, that's right.