redirecting www.domain.com/home to just www.domain.com

[WithaG Profile]

Hello all

I wonder if you could give me some help.
I've been using .htaccess and mapfiles without problem for years to rewrite urls such as /index.aspx?p=123 to /friendlyname.

However I've hit a stumbling block due to a Google SEO issue. In IIS, http://www.domain.com has a default document of index.aspx?p=3. So when you visit "www.domain.com" you get served index.aspx?p=3 but you don't see that bit of the url.

In the menu if you click the home page you go to http://www.domain.com/home which is also index.aspx?p=3....a duplicate content issue.

Now my suggestion was to correct the menu code so that the homepage link purely links to http://www.domain.com but the boss doesn't want to have to open and recompile several dozen projects and would like to correct it via the .htaccess. The trouble is, whatever I try results in an infinite loop!

I have tried

Code: Select all

#if url contains home just redirect to the pure url
RewriteRule ^(home) http://www.domain.com/? [301,L]
#else carry on with the mapfiles
RewriteRule ^([a-z_0-9]+)$ index.aspx?p=${mapfile:$1} [L]


and

Code: Select all

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} (&|^)p=3(&|$)
RewriteRule ^index.aspx$ http://www.domain.com/? [301,L]


The first one obviously has no effect because it is simply serving the home page and the url remains the same in the location bar.
The second one potentially sets up an infinite loop depending on where I place it amongst the other rules.

Am I overlooking something super simple here? I just want any call to http://www.domain.com/home to actually redirect to http://www.domain.com in the location bar.

Many thanks

[HeliconAndrew]

Well, the simple redirect shouldn't be a problem.

Code: Select all

RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /

RewriteRule ^home$ http://www.domain.com [NC,R=301,L]

I suspect you want somekind of rewrite behind it. Do you?

Regards
Andrew

[WithaG Profile]

Thanks, that seems to have done the trick. I had attempted something almost identical to that before without the [NC, R=301] and nothing happened - although I can see from the example I gave you I accidentally left the $ off the end!
I also used [301,L] without the "R=" which I was unaware of before.
Can you remind me what the NC does?

[HeliconAndrew]

NC just means "case non sensitive"