Cannot rewrite rule

Which .htaccess file ? The one in the subdirectory or the website root ?

In the Admin folder. Once the site is ready to go live I will move the site out of the admin folder.

The website root also has a wordpress install which will be removed once we are ready to go live.

Your .htaccess rule is ignored as written. Generally, the standard WP rewrite rules should be last in .htaccess. You shouldn’t modify anything within the WP comment delimiters because WP could overwrite this section.

I’d suggest you use RedirectMatch instead of RewriteRule, assuming your server has mod-alias installed. Most do.

If you use WP rewrites, I believe the destination has to be a file, usually index.php. Let’s say the page ID of where-to-eat-drink is 123. The destination could be 'index.php?page_id=123&var=$matches[1]'

Any time you change WP rewrites, you must visit the permalinks settings page or call flush_rewrite_rules(). You should not call the flush function in regular code that executes on each request. It should be added to rare or one time code like a plugin activation hook. Thus when developing your code, visiting the permalinks screen is easier.

@bcworkz thanks very much for the heads up on WP comment delimiters and flushing permalinks settings. I can now redirect to the correct URL using your code and hitting the permalinks settings page to flush, however $_GET[‘var’] = nothing. Don’t suppose you know why that could be happening?

P.S. I tried both .htaccess and the function in functions.php. .htaccess still gave 404 but the functions.php redirected correctly but didn’t give me the variable attempted to access via $_GET[‘var’].

www.mywebsite.com/admin/where-to-eat-drink/raj_pavilion

now correctly redirects to

www.mywebsite.com/admin/where-to-eat-drink/

using the function below

full wp function:

function custom_rewrite_rule() {
	add_rewrite_rule('^where-to-eat-drink/([^/]+)/?','index.php?page_id=54&var=$matches[1]','top');
}
add_action('init', 'custom_rewrite_rule', 10, 0);

Call to provide me with ‘raj_pavilion’ to query database is

$_GET['var']

however this returns nothing.

Hmmm. Try adding ‘var’ to the whitelist of public query vars by using the “query_vars” filter. Simply add the ‘var’ element to the passed array of current query vars. Then the value should be available as a query var and there would be no need to get it from $_GET. The value should then be part of the WP_Query object’s query_vars data.

Some redirects through .htaccess will strip query strings from the URL. Be sure the rewritten URL with query string (index.php?page_id=54&var=raj_pavilion) is not being redirected further. Check your access logs to see possible additional redirects.

If neither of those help, we will need to dig deeper. How and where are you trying to use $_GET[‘var’]?

Brilliant, never heard of the query_vars before. This worked thank you. I changed my ‘var’ to ‘place’ for no reason other than for better reference.

In functions.php :

function filter__query_vars( $query_vars ) {
	$query_vars[] = 'place';
	return $query_vars;
}
add_filter( 'query_vars', 'filter__query_vars' );

Then in the document I could reference it by

echo $place

Awesome! I can’t explain how query_var works but $_GET doesn’t. My suggestion was a shot in the dark. I’m pleased it actually worked.

Changing variable names for better reference is an excellent reason! Otherwise you may revisit this code a year later and think “what the heck is this “var” for?”