301 htacess redirect question

[christianfourie]

Hi all, my name is Christian.
Been struggling the past 2 months to get information out of various forums...so forgive me if a am a bit critical.

This is my problem and I am looking for advice...please?

My main domain is: gateway-africa.com
- This has a sub domain: safari.gateway-africa.com
- Had some duplicate content problems due to have the safari folder in the main domain.
- I am putting all the content of the safari folder in the sub domain (safari.gateway-africa) and then the safari folder would be empty. Is this the correct procedure, thingie to do?

Question:
- Where do I put a .htaccess file to 301 redirect the safari folder urls to the sub domain, In the safari folder of the main domain, or in the main domain itself?

- What is the correct code that go in a .htacces? Just "redirect 301 blah blah", or is there addtional code before this?

There quite a few questions I need to get info on, but later.

Thank you kindly for your help if you can.

[ScriptMan]

I moved your post to this section for a better chance at an answer. I know the simple stuff but this one might be over my head a bit. Give it a day or two for the correct answer to come along.

Welcome to the forums.

[billzo]

Originally Posted by christianfourie

Question:
- Where do I put a .htaccess file to 301 redirect the safari folder urls to the sub domain, In the safari folder of the main domain, or in the main domain itself?

- What is the correct code that go in a .htacces? Just "redirect 301 blah blah", or is there addtional code before this?

I think it would be best to put it in the root directory of the main domain. You can see this for more comprehensive information:

http://codegrad.hub.ph/using-htacces...in-subfolders/

However, it used to be that Google viewed subdomains as separate websites, meaning that if you have a link to a subdomain your main domain wouldn't get credit. That seems to have changed last year. I don't know what other search engines are doing.

http://www.seroundtable.com/subdomai...ols-13960.html

I don't see any benefit to using a subdomain in this case at all.

[Muddy]

I was just going to post a similar question. I'm wondering how to prevent an .htaccess file located in the root from redirecting sub-directories.

[Dan Williamson]

Originally Posted by Muddy

I was just going to post a similar question. I'm wondering how to prevent an .htaccess file located in the root from redirecting sub-directories.

I'm not sure, it's been a long time since I looked at anything to do with this, but I am pretty sure unless it's advanced any you would have to look into mod_rewrite.

[Muddy]

Thanks Dan! It was as simple as this:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^$ http://www.example.com/ [R=301,L]