redirect and 404

[JayKay]

1) I have a redirect from mypage.com to www.mypage.com/main/about-us/ in htaccess with

Quote

    RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mypage.com [NC]

    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.mypage.com/main/about-us/$1 [L,R=301]

 

 

How can I redirect both from www.mypage.com and mypage.com =to=> www.mypage.com/main/about-us???

 

If the www.mypage.com is the same with www.mypage.com/main/about-us because it is redirected, will that affect SEO somehow?

 

2) with the help of htaccess I receive the variable from the URL ie. www.mypage.com/variable/

and in my index.php script there is a condition that if this variable is not one  of the 4 values and is incorrect then

Quote

 

    header("HTTP/1.0 404 Not Found");

    exit();

 

 

but all I see is blank screen when I type www.mypage.com/asdfa/

But I checked with Server header checker tool

http://www.webrankinfo.com/english/tools/server-header.php

and it showed that the server gave 404 error correctly but as I said the screen is blank

BUT

when i type www.mypage.com/sdfsdf

then I see the correct 404 error response.

 

why is that so? should I be concerned?

my htaccess:

Quote

 

 

Options +FollowSymLinks

    RewriteEngine on

    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d [OR]

    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f

    RewriteRule .* - [L]

    RewriteRule ^([^/]*)/([^/]*)/([^/]*)/$ index.php?lang=$1&page=$2&t=$3 [L]

    RewriteRule ^([^/]*)/([^/]*)/([^/]*)$ index.php?lang=$1&page=$2&t=$3 [L]

    RewriteRule ^([^/]*)/([^/]*)/$ /index.php?lang=$1&page=$2 [L]

    RewriteRule ^([^/]*)/([^/]*)$ index.php?lang=$1&page=$2 [L]

[cags]

1) It's not entirely clear what you mean here. The combination you have there will redirect any page request to the mypage.com domain to the URL specified (i.e. http://www.mypage.com/main/about-us/%{REQUEST_URI}), is that really what you wish to do? Either way, if you want to also match requests to the www. domain then you can use...

 

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www\.)?mypage.com [NC]

 

But bare in mind this will cause a redirect loop. If for example you requested http://www.mypage.com/foo, Apache would do a 301 redirect to http://www.mypage.com/main/about-us/foo. Since the %{REQUEST_URI} will also match the .* pattern you are using this will then get redirected to http://www.mypage.com/main/about-us/main/about-us/foo and so forth, continually adding in main/about-us/ until the server hits it's redirect limit and throws a 500 server error.

 

2) There is no reason why that should display anything other than a blank page as you are not echo'ing out anything, you are simply sending a 404 response code to the client. This is not the same as Apache triggering a 404 error and redirecting to a 404 error page. The header you are using is what should be used for creating custom 404 events. If variable can only be 1 of 4 values you would be better off checking this before PHP is invoked, using something like...

 

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^(var1|var2|var3|var4)
// whatever rewrite rule

 

This way you will only be rewriting the valid URLs and all other URLs will throw the 404 error.

 

[JayKay]

Thanks for your answer.

 

The second clear to me but about the first.

 

I would like that if I type www.mypage.com or mypage.com then I get redirected to www.mypage.com/main/about-us/

 

could you please help me?

 

with this rule that I have only mypage.com gets redirected to www.mypage.com/main/about-us/

but when I type www.mypage.com then I get www.mypage.com

 

is that a good practice regarding SEO if www.mypage.com is the same as www.mypage.com/main/about-us/?