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Use the following rules in your Apache configuration (or your .htaccess file) to redirect all traffic from one domain to another. This also keeps the query string in place so that the user isn't just dumped to the homepage.

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.example\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]

These rules are mod_rewrite dependent, so you'll need that module enabled in your Apache install.

Whilst creating a site the other day I thought about how I would manage the sitemap.xml file. This file is basically a XML file containing a list of URLs. Most major search engines understand (and look for) this file, so having it present on a site is a definite must.

To stop access to a directory (and anything in that directory) all you need is a simple RewriteRule.

RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^exampledirectory/(.*)$ / [R=301,L]

In this example, if this .htaccess file resides in the root directory of the site and you try to access anything within /exampledirectory you will be redirected back to the root folder. To redirect to another folder (like anotherdirectory) on your web server use the following rule.

Using mod_rewrite on websites is fairly straightforward and can create some lovely looking URL structures. Instead of having a URL that contains lots of odd looking parameters like this:

http://www.example.com/example.php?parameter1=value1¶meter2=value2

You can use a .htaccess file to rewrite the URL on the server side in order to shorten this to something like this: