301 redirect (from my .htaccess file) causes 404 error

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  billpinnell · Member · Dec 30, 2007 at 11:41 pm

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  Hi, I’ve just moved 4 blogs from Blogger (but hosted on my own domain) to WP.com

  First off I transferred all blogs to blogspot hosting so I could use the ‘Magic Import’ function (at the same time consolidating 3 blogs into one as required). This worked a treat and I ended up with billxxx.wordpress.com and familyxxx.wordpress.com up and running.

  I then tackled the issue of redirecting people to new blog:

  All four blogs had their own domains associated with them: http://www.billxxx.com, http://www.son1xxx.com, son2xxx.com etc

  I also had a hosting service at http://www.billxxx.com/ to hold all four blogs, including uploaded photos etc. (www.billxx.com/index.html was mine and http://www.billxxx.com/son1/index.html etc was used for kids)

  For the three ‘sub blogs’ I used web forwarding provided by hosting service to point them at the new familyxxx.wordpress.com page. All photos still work on the blog as they link to http://www.billxxx.com/uploaded images/ correctly)

  The 4th blog is causing more problems…

  So I can’t use web-forwarding on http://www.billxxx.com as then though the correct billxxx.wordpress.com would be used all the links to http://www.billxxx.com/uploaded images etc would end up pointing at wordpress and not find any files

  Then I read about using a 301 redirect for a specific file – in my case http://www.billxxx.com/index.html. This seems ideal as I only care about the one blog/index file.

  I made up an .htaccess file at the root of my hosted space. (took ages to find out I could actually do this – never saw it when I used ftp explorer to look at site – only when I used on-line “manage files” option)

  redirect 301 /index.html http://billxxx.wordpress.com/index.html

  However, there doesn’t appear to such a file at my wordpress.com directory – so I get my blog page up with a big “404 – Not Found” error on it – not what I want.

  I tried removing .html, changing it to .php (which works in browser but not in redirect) to no avail.

  This can’t be the first time someone has tried to do this – I’ve googled and looked at forum but don’t seem to be able to find anyone who has done / is trying to do same as me.

  Any help really appreciated.

  Thanks,

  Bill

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  tester21 · Member · Dec 31, 2007 at 12:04 am

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  You are self-hosted and this forum are for those free-hosted here at wordpress.com. You need to ask over at http://wordpress.org. The software here is different than what you are using.

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  billpinnell · Member · Dec 31, 2007 at 12:17 am

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  Hello @tester21

  Thanks for quick response – but it would have been good if you could have read the first line of my post a bit slower….

  >>I’ve just moved 4 blogs from Blogger (but hosted on my own domain) to *** WP.com ***
  Yes, my old (blogger) blogs were hosted by me, but the new WordPress based ones are on WordPress.com (not on a hosted service using wp.org software)

  So… help still needed please!

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  timethief · Member · Dec 31, 2007 at 12:21 am

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  From the FAQs http://faq.wordpress.com/2007/09/09/can-i-redirect-my-blog/
  Can I redirect my blog?
  If you have moved away from wordpress.com it is not possible to redirect your blog either to another blog here or to a domain elsewhere.
  We cannot return a 301.

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  timethief · Member · Dec 31, 2007 at 12:23 am

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  I don’t know if the above information is helpful or not but I was passing through and decided to share it. You may want to check this out or not http://faq.wordpress.com/category/domain-mapping/

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  billpinnell · Member · Dec 31, 2007 at 12:26 am

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  @timethief,

  Thanks for FAQ link – but that doesn’t reflect my issue – I’m not trying to redirect from WP.com to anywhere. I’m trying to redirect from an existing website/domain TO wordpress.com

  I apologize if my original post is a bit long – but it would really help if people took the time to read it properly before responding ;)

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  timethief · Member · Dec 31, 2007 at 12:29 am

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  Yes, I did understand you but I couldn’t find anything exactly on point as in coming from the opposite direction. Staff holiday hours are here https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic.php?id=19355

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  tester21 · Member · Dec 31, 2007 at 12:30 am

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  Try redirect to http://billxxx.wordpress.com/ without the “index”.

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  billpinnell · Member · Dec 31, 2007 at 12:31 am

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  @timethief,

  Thanks for the second link – it looked more exciting – however it doesn’t provide any working solutions for this situation.

  Also, I want to keep all the domain stuff working for sub-directories – so I can keep all my photos there (not at WP.com) so domain mapping is over-the-top.

  Thanks for links – I do appreciate it.

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  billpinnell · Member · Dec 31, 2007 at 12:33 am

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  @tester21,

  great minds and all that… Tried it already – and just again to make sure – doesn’t work as it ends up pointing at billxxx.wordpress.com/index.html still (which doesn’t exist)

  :(

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  tester21 · Member · Dec 31, 2007 at 12:44 am

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  My last stab. Have you tried: redirect 301 http://www.billxxx.com/ http://billxxx.wordpress.com/

  If you were using wordpress.org software, there is no index.html. All html pages are built on the fly by the php.

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  billpinnell · Member · Dec 31, 2007 at 9:02 am

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  @tester21,

  Sorry – no cigar. Remember that I only want http://www.billxxx.com/index.html to be redirected – everything else on my old site I want to be accessible where it is (i.e. no redirect)

  I must be missing something fundamental – i.e. trying to go about this the wrong way – as I can’t find any working examples elsewhere