htaccess redirects and Wordpress

Question

I am migrating from an ancient static web site to Wordpress.

In the old site, I used htaccess and RewriteRule to simplify URLs and mask the underlying parms. One case was:

RewriteRule ^definition/([^/]+) /display-definition?word=$1 [NC]

This allowed people to specify a URL of:

domain.com/definition/love

And under the sheets executed instead:

domain.com/display-definition?word=love

I have created and tested the new Wordpress page, and manually passing it the parameter works fine. The htaccess redirect does not, and instead tosses visitors to the default Wordpress 404 page.

I have tried placing the RewriteRule in various places in htaccess, but the results do not differ.

Current attempted htaccess file is:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^definition/([^/]+) /display-definition?word=$1 [NC]
RewriteRule ^murphyism/([^/]+) /display-murphy?id=$1 [NC]

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>

# END WordPress

Answer 1

You shouldn't do this in htaccess with wordpress. You should instead add a rewrite rule using add_rewrite_rule and then register the query var.

You would be looking at adding to rewrite rules to handle your two rewrites:

RewriteRule ^definition/([^/]+) /display-definition?word=$1 [NC]
RewriteRule ^murphyism/([^/]+) /display-murphy?id=$1 [NC]

For Definition:

add_action( 'init', 'wpse251676_definition_rewrite_rule' );
function wpse251676_definition_rewrite_rule(){
    add_rewrite_rule(
        'definition/([a-z0-9A-Z_-]+)/?$',
        'index.php?pagename=display-definition&definition_word=$matches[1]',
        'top'
    );
}

For Murphyism:

add_action( 'init', 'wpse251676_murphyism_rewrite_rule' );
function wpse251676_murphyism_rewrite_rule(){
    add_rewrite_rule(
        'murphyism/([a-z0-9A-Z_-]+)/?$',
        'index.php?pagename=display-murphy&murphy_id=$matches[1]',
        'top'
    );
}

You can then register the query vars with:

add_filter( 'query_vars', 'wpse251676_query_vars' );
function wpse251676_query_vars( $query_vars ) {
    $query_vars[] = 'definition_word';
    $query_vars[] = 'murphy_id';
    return $query_vars;
}

With this you can then use the builtin get_query_var in your template files or wherever necessary to get the variables instead of using $_GET['variable']

$word = get_query_var('definition_word'); //$_GET['definition_word']
$id   = get_query_var('murphy_id');       //$_GET['murphy_id']

NOTE: It's always good practice to prefix your variables so they have a unique name different from any formally defined or futureones

References:

• Rewrite API
• add_rewrite_rule
• Wordpress Query Vars
• query_var filter
• get_query_var

Answer 2

The standard WordPress .htaccess file will do this for you if you select one of the "pretty permalinks" in the Settings / Permalinks page, like the "posts" option.

    # BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress

I can't seem to get that to format properly, so check the source page here - https://codex.wordpress.org/htaccess

For more info, see the Codex page - https://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Permalinks#mod_rewrite:_.22Pretty_Permalinks.22