I move my blog around to new engines a lot. I think I’ve been averaging once every three months. Unfortunately, nearly every blogging engine has a different way to map post URLs. As a result, a lot of old links can get broken.

A detailed description of how to use Regular Expressions to robustly redirect an arbitrary URL via an .htaccess file is outside the scope of this site, especially because it’s been done well already. But when Harry Marks asked for help in getting redirects working for the latest iteration of Curious Rat, I figured it was time to do some digital housekeeping of my own.

Ruhoh URL Scheme

Input URL

http://themindfulbit.com/2012/11/09/meet-nerdquery/

Output URL

http://themindfulbit.com/blog/meet-nerdquery

.htaccess Rule

RewriteRule ^[0-9]+/?[0-9]+/?[0-9]+/?([^/]+)/?$ /blog/$1 [R=301,L]

All this does is strip out the /Year/Month/Day part, replaces it with /blog/, and strips the trailing slash.

Squarespace 5 URL Scheme

Input URL

http://themindfulbit.com/articles/2012/11/09/meet-nerdquery.html

Output URL

http://themindfulbit.com/blog/meet-nerdquery

.htaccess Rule

RewriteRule ^articles/?[0-9]+/?[0-9]+/?[0-9]+/?([^/]+)\.html$ /blog/$1 [R=301,L]

This strips out the articles/Year/Month/Day part, replaces it with /blog/, and strips the trailing .html.

Squarespace 6 URL Scheme

I believe Squarespace 6 uses a slightly different scheme as well. For completeness:

Input URL

http://themindfulbit.com/home/2012/11/09/meet-nerdquery/

Output URL

http://themindfulbit.com/blog/meet-nerdquery

.htaccess Rule

RewriteRule ^home/?[0-9]+/?[0-9]+/?[0-9]+/?([^/]+)$ /blog/$1 [R=301,L]

This strips out home/Year/Month/Day, replaces it with /blog/, and also strips off the trailing slash.

Hit me up on Twitter or App.net if you have any deeper questions on how this stuff works. I don’t know a ton, but I’ll do my best.