Effective Time for .htaccess Changes

Advanced Topics
#1

Not that there’s anything wrong with using the cPanel interface to edit .htaccess files, but if I do edit them in the shell, what’s required to implement the changes? Saving in cPanel makes things live immediately, but saving in ssh doesn’t seem to.

#2

Editing in shell is definitely immediate, so we’d need more information on what you’re doing. Any changes saved to .htaccess are immediately active (though sometimes a browser will cache certain information)

#3

Somehow it’s not so immediate for me.
STR:
Edit public_html/.htaccess in cPanel to set up a redirect from root to a WordPress install

# BEGIN root redirect
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/?$
RewriteRule (.*) /bleahh/ [R=301,L]
</IfModule>

# END root redirect

Save from cPanel → effective immediately
ssh in to the server
cd public_html
vi .htaccess
Change bleahh to omekas
:wq
Still hasn’t kicked in a couple hours later

I think that’s all I’ve done, but maybe there’s a missing step I’m not noticing.

#4

That definitely sounds like a browser caching issue. A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect and browsers take the word permanent seriously :). Try a different browser to confirm. When testing redirects I would use 302 instead which is a temporary redirect and shouldn’t get cached in the browser.

#5

Dammit!

I thought I had read your tute properly (quickly, but properly) and was using the temp code.

Second browser checks out your response. Tx!