301 redirect in htaccess not working

[DrByte]

Rewriting addresses that contain & and = parameters is often quite complex in .htaccess.

Try explaining again what you want to accomplish. Pretend you know nothing about htaccess and ways to do redirects. What is the situation you have now and what do you want to end up with? Maybe there's an easier or better way to get there ...

[FrenchFrog]

A client with a store containing hunfreds of categories asked us to create "mirror categories": they don't want to create item "aliases" during the listing process (item listed in several categories), so we are trying to make a "dummy category" whose sole purpose will be to redirect to the category that has the items in it.

The category in question has dozens of subcategories and we think this is not the best way to go. A redirect seemed to be the easiest way to handle this...

Thank you for your help.

[DrByte]

And this is for just "one" category to be redirected, right?

Is this a top-level category, or is it a subcat ?

[FrenchFrog]

actually, we would have several, some are subcats

[DrByte]

Try this:
1. copy the /includes/init_includes/init_category_path.php file to the/includes/init_includes/overrides folder.

2. edit the new file in the overrides folder.
Near the bottom of the file (around line 40) you'll see this:

$this_is_home_page = ($current_page=='index' && (!isset($_GET['cPath'])) && (!isset($_GET['manufacturers_id'])) && (!isset($_GET['typefilter'])) );
?>

insert some extra code before the last line, like this:

$this_is_home_page = ($current_page=='index' && (!isset($_GET['cPath'])) && (!isset($_GET['manufacturers_id'])) && (!isset($_GET['typefilter'])) );

// redirect certain categories to others, instead of the usual approach of cross-linking products to alternate categories via the admin
$newPath = '';
if ($cPath == '3_12') $newPath = '54_60';
if ($cPath == '22') $newPath = '2_19';

if ($newPath != '') {
  header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");
  zen_redirect(zen_href_link(FILENAME_DEFAULT, 'cPath=' . $newPath));
}
?>

Substitute the cPath and newPath values as needed. Duplicate as needed.

[FrenchFrog]

hahahahhhhh I BUY THIS ONE!

Thank you Doctor, I'm feeling much better now :-)

Have a great day!