---
title: htaccess and redirect
subtitle: how to get htaccess working and redirect feed to feedburner
date: 2012-01-12
keywords: [apache, web, htaccess]
---

Okay, so after my [post about htaccess][htaccess] the other day, I still
had one more thing to do before I could get the rewrite rules working.

I wanted to redirect requests for my [podcast][tmc] rss feed (eg any
reqests for the specific `feed.xml` file) to [feedburner][], but
whenever I put the rewrite rules into my `.htaccess` file I would keep
seeing an "internal server error".

I made the following changes to get it working. This is for [ubuntu][],
but should work for any [apache][] unix install.

First, I surronded the rewrite rules with `<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>`
flags, which stopped the "internal server error" showing to any request
no matter the url.

	<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
	RewriteEngine on
	RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT}  !FeedBurner
	RewriteRule ^feed\.xml$        http://feeds.feedburner.com/themarshcast [R=301,L]
	</IfModule>

This meant [the marsh cast][tmc] site would work again, but requests for
`feed.xml` still wern't being redirected.

I then found on *Mehdi Behamins blog*<sup>[dead link]</sup> that I had to enable the
apache module rewrite by runing

	sudo a2enmod rewrite

and restarting apache with

	sudo service apache2 restart

Now requests for `feed.xml` go to the [feedburner feed][tmcfeed] url.

[htaccess]: 2012-01-05.htaccess.html
[ubuntu]: http://www.ubuntu.com/
[apache]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_HTTP_Server
[feed]: http://podcast.marsh.ws/feed.xml
[feedburner]: http://feedburner.google.com/
[tmc]: podcasts.html
[tmcfeed]: http://feeds.feedburner.com/themarshcast