ohryan.ca

A Web Developer in Winnipeg

Modern Mobile Redirect Using .htaccess

in

The following set of rewrite rules will redirect all Android, Blackberry, iOS, Windows and WebOS devices to a specific mobile directory on your website. Additionally, it will redirect Google’s mobile crawler – according to Google search spam czar Matt Cutts this is perfectly acceptable and even somewhat encourage.

To implement these rules:

  1. Replace “mobiledirectoryhere” with the path to your mobile site. If your mobile site is located in a subdirectory, use the full URL (including “http://”) and you can omit the first RewriteCond.
  2. Then copy & paste the ruleset into the site’s .htaccess file or the main apache configuration.

Rationale

Since the last time I wrote about mobile browser detection and redirection in 2009 the mobile device landscape has changed once again. Smartphones dominate the mobile browsing landscape and feature phones are almost not existant in server logs.

The old redirection rules I posted attempt to redirect every mobile phone under the sun. At this point in 2011, it’s probably safe to completely ignore ancient phones and simplify your Apache rules in the process.

Comments

95 responses to “Modern Mobile Redirect Using .htaccess”

  1. Tweets that mention Modern Mobile Redirect Using .htaccess | OhRyan.ca — Topsy.com

    […] This post was mentioned on Twitter by The Real Ryan N and Wil Alambre, Brad Kendall. Brad Kendall said: RT @ohryan: New blog post: Modern Mobile Redirect Using .htaccess http://ohryan.ca/blog/2011/01/21/modern-mobile-redirect-using-htaccess/ […]

  2. Richard Avatar
    Richard

    Hey Ryan,

    Good call – Lean & fast. If you’re looking for something a little more targeted (eg Android Tablets) check out Handset Detection (www.handsetdetection.com). It uses explicit http header matching against a database of known devices.

    Cheers
    Richard

    1. Avatar
      Anonymous

      You charge $13 – $547 per month?! Jeez, I should have thought of this!

  3. Redirect to a mobile site, unobtrusively | Boulder Information Services

    […] only have to include one unobtrusive little file. A little search turned up OhRyan’s blog post about redirecting to mobile sites, using an Apache .htaccess file. Best of all, he had come to the same conclusion we had: that you can pretty much ignore anything […]

  4. Sabrina Morgan Avatar
    Sabrina Morgan

    Hi Ryan,

    Thanks for posting this! Unfortunately I’ve been having a beastly time setting up a mobile redirect from my main site to a subdomain on my main site (http://m.mysite.com). The kicker is I need deep links on the main site to automatically forward to the matching page on m.mysite.com for mobile viewers.

    What would be the best way to accomplish this?

    1. Avatar
      Anonymous

      Apologies for the late response.
      Try changing the last line of the rule to: RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://m.mysite.com/$1 [L,R=302]

      Let me know if you found different/better solution.

  5. GMG Avatar
    GMG

    Thank you for the .htaccess inserts… It worked perfectly. A heck of alot better than using a bloated PHP or Javascript code that ultimately slows it down. When using mobile devices, lag time is not easily tolerated.

  6. Cpaholovach Avatar
    Cpaholovach

    Ryan,

    This code is a huge help for my websites. I really appreciate the simplicity and speed. I wondered if I could change out “ipad” (I would like ipad to see my desktop version) with “palmos” and add in a few more options from your 2009 post as well?

    Also, does “webos” essentially catch most of the other handheld devices?

    1. Avatar
      Anonymous

      If you want iPads to see the desktop version of your site, you can just removed “ipad”.

      “webos” covers most palm & HP devices running webOS, as far as I understand you’ll have to include “palmos” to catch early webOS devices like the Palm Pre and Pixi.

      Hope that helps.

  7. .htaccess Mobile Browser Redirect | OhRyan.ca

    […] Checkout the latest version of the ruleset first. I just finished building out a simple little mobile site for hiphopdx.com. When I asked Google the best way to detect mobile browsers with PHP, it led to me this PHP code by Andy Moore. After a few minutes of contemplating the best way to include the code in the existing CMS framework I realized that it would probably be best to move the functionality outside of PHP. I mean, why clutter up display code with HTTP traffic manipulation. The website’s main traffic cop Apache is already perfectly capable of handling the duties already. […]

  8. Revisiting Mobile Redirection Using .htaccess ReWrite Rules | OhRyan.ca

    […] This article is out of date, check my latest code snippet here. Back in 2007 I wrote a post detailing a method for detecting and redirecting mobile browsers using .htaccess. Since then the mobile landscape has changed quite a bit: iPhone and Android have been released, the PDA market is all but dead and phones are better in general. […]

  9. George Avatar
    George

    Thanks for posting this Ryan !

    Would the bypass-option still work ? (I have no experience with cookies yet :P)

    RewriteCond %{HTTP_COOKIE} !^.*bypass.*$ [NC]

    1. Avatar
      Anonymous

      I don’t see why not (but have not tested it myself).

  10. kaboom Avatar
    kaboom

    Maybe a stupid question but what am I doing wrong here? I changed ‘mobiledirectoryhere’ with my subdomain ‘http://m.mysite.com’ and added the code. Now my site doesn’t open on iPhone with an error message ‘Safari cannot open the page because too many redirects occurred’. Thanks

    1. George Avatar
      George

      I had the exact same problem. Put an empty .htaccesd file in you mobile subdirectory and try again… Let me know.

      1. George Avatar
        George

        .htaccess

        1. kaboom Avatar
          kaboom

          Thanks George, still the same problem..

          1. Dan Avatar
            Dan

            Did you get a resolution to the “too many redirect” problem?  I’m having the same issue?

            Thanks

          2. kaboom Avatar
            kaboom

            Nope, can someone help us out here please?

          3. Will Avatar
            Will

            I’m still having the same issue as well. If I can find a different solution I’ll let you guys know. Please post here if you find a solution also. Thanks!

          4. Avatar
            Anonymous

            I responded to kaboom’s question above: http://ohryan.ca/blog/2011/01/21/modern-mobile-redirect-using-htaccess/#comment-266136097

            Hope that helps.

        2. kaboom Avatar
          kaboom

          I must be doing something wrong I guess..

          These are the 4 lines that my .htaccess file contains:

          RewriteEngine on
          RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/http://m.mysite.com/.*$
          RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} “android|blackberry|ipad|iphone|ipod|iemobile|opera mobile|palmos|webos|googlebot-mobile” [NC]
          RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /http://m.mysite.com/ [L,R=302]

          1. kaboom Avatar
            kaboom

            I must be editing the wrong htaccess file I guess..

            I have 4 websites in the same hosting account (each of them in separate folders such as /www/mysite1, /www/mysite2, etc) and I only need to edit redirect for one of the websites. So the htaccess file I’m editing is the one in the following folder /www/mysite1 (or /public_html/mysite1).

            I noticed that there are other htaccess files, not in website folders. One is in /www (and /public_html) folder, and in other various folders such as /www/_private, /www/_vti_bin, /www/_vti_cnf, /www/_vti_pvt.

            Sorry if it looks a dumb question but could someone guide me please?

            Thanks!

          2. Avatar
            Anonymous

            The REQUEST_URI portion of the rule is matching the request URI portion of the request (ie. everything after the host name). That first line is stopping a redirection loop when you are redirecting mobile request to a subdirector. Since you are redirecting to a subdomain, you wouldn’t need that line. Also, the preceding slash in the last line is not right. 

            Try something like this:

            RewriteEngine onRewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} “android|blackberry|ipad|iphone|ipod|iemobile|opera mobile|palmos|webos|googlebot-mobile” [NC]RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://m.mysite.com/ %5BL,R=302%5D

          3. Will Avatar
            Will

            Hi Ryan,

            Thank you very much for taking the time to help us all out. I tried your code above but it didn’t work for me, and when mobile users attempted to go to the website I would get a 505 server error. Therefore I used the following code instead:

            RewriteEngine On#redirect mobile browsersRewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*iPhone.*$RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://mywebsite/mobile/index.html [R=301]RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*iPad.*$RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://mywebsite/mobile/index.html [R=301]RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*BlackBerry.*$RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://mywebsite/mobile/index.html [R=301]RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*Palm.*$RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://mywebsite/mobile/index.html [R=301]

            Inside the new mobile folder I created a new .htaccess file which has the RewriteEngine Off so that there wouldn’t be the redirect issue. Despite the fact a different solution has come up, I would much rather use your solution because it covers so many different types of mobile devices. Do you have any idea what I was doing wrong when trying to use your solution? I used your most recent post verbatim, except adding in my mobile website location for the URL:

            RewriteEngine onRewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} “android|blackberry|ipad|iphone|ipod|iemobile|opera mobile|palmos|webos|googlebot-mobile” [NC]RewriteRule ^(.*)$http://m.mysite.com/ [L,R=302]

            If you have any helpful hints I am all ears!

            – Will

          4. notian Avatar
            notian

            Your file should probably look more like this

            RewriteEngine on

            RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^m.mysite.com$

            RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} “android|blackberry|ipad|iphone|ipod|iemobile|opera mobile|palmos|webos|googlebot-mobile” [NC]

            RewriteRule ^/?(.*)$ http://m.mysite.com/$1 %5BL,R=302%5D

  11. Dan Avatar
    Dan

    I’m new to htaccess. I copy and pasted this into my file, but nothing happens. Am I missing any additional code to open or end this command?

    1. Avatar
      Anonymous

      Have you replaced “mobiledirecotyhere/” with the path of your mobile content?

  12. jimb0connolly Avatar
    jimb0connolly

    Great script, thanks!
    Since Android tablets exclude “mobile”, but still use “Android”, how would I redirect only iPads and Android tablets to a tablet or full site?

  13. BJC Avatar
    BJC

    I was so excited to find this today, but unfortunately it’s not working for me even though I have done everything correctly.

  14. Ken Bunce Avatar
    Ken Bunce

    Many thanks for this snippet. Have been trying to solve this for days and this worked!!

  15. Veloval Avatar
    Veloval

    Hi Ryan, I don’t know what is it that i’m doing, but it’s timing out on me (too many redirects). May be because I’m forcing the index? My main site is site/EN/index.html and site/ES/index.html. I’m using a 301 redirect to force it.

    1. William Vega Avatar
      William Vega

      This is the fix to stop the redirect root.

      RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/(stats/|missing.html|failed_auth.html|error/).* [NC]
      RewriteRule .* – [L]
       
      RewriteCond %{ENV:REDIRECT_STATUS} 200
      RewriteRule .* – [L]

  16. James Laughlin Avatar
    James Laughlin

    Great post Ryan, but I have one question.  How do you make that RewriteCond negative for non mobile browsers?

    For example, this doesn’t work. I get internal server errors:
    [code]

    RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} “android|blackberry|ipad|iphone|ipod|iemobile|opera mobile|palmos|webos|googlebot-mobile” [NC]

    RewriteRule ^cloud /free-cloud-assessment.php [L,R=301]

    RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !”android|blackberry|ipad|iphone|ipod|iemobile|opera mobile|palmos|webos|googlebot-mobile” [NC]

    RewriteRule ^cloud /what-is-the-cloud.php [L,R=301]
    [/code]

    How do you take /cloud and send it to one destination for mobile and another destination for non-mobile browsers?

    1. Avatar
      Anonymous

      Like you said on twitter, putting the non-mobile version in /cloud and redirecting mobile UAs somewhere else, works. 

      But you answer your question, I think a negative RewriteCond would look something like: 

      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} “!/android|blackberry|ipad|iphone|ipod|iemobile|opera mobile|palmos|webos|googlebot-mobile/”

  17. Phil Avatar
    Phil

    Thanks for the post… I’ve found that this is the easiest and most concise redirect for mobile sites, from what I’ve seen. However, how would I make it so that the file structure is preserved? Here’s my code right now:

    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/mobile/.*$RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} “android|blackberry|iphone|ipod|iemobile|opera mobile|palmos|webos|googlebot-mobile” [NC]RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /mobile/ [L,R=302]

    I’m trying to make it, so that, for example, if someone on a mobile browser types in http://www.mmisi.com/companies.php, they get redirected to http://www.mmisi.com/mobile/companies.php, instead of http://www.mmisi.com/mobile. Thanks.

    1. Phil Avatar
      Phil

      Also, what would you suggest as far as adding an opt-out, or “Full Version” link?

      1. Justin Avatar
        Justin

         Has anyone figured out how to have an op-out “Full Version” link –

  18. Don Barthel Avatar
    Don Barthel

    Just a note, I’m with the Webfaction host and for my static/PHP site I needed this extra line at the top of my .htaccess file to make your script work:

    RewriteEngine OnThanks much for your script, it works great!

    1. Don Barthel Avatar
      Don Barthel

      RewriteEngine On

  19. Alseaf3 Avatar
    Alseaf3

    I want to redirect all non-mobile users to a message saying ‘please visit us on a mobile device’. How do i do that?

  20. Avatar
    Anonymous

    Thanks for the post. Helped me a lot. I’m still fighting how to redirect non-mobile to the root of the site. However, I found this interesting piece of .htaccess code: http://www.gpf-comics.com/mobile_rewrite_tests.txt if it helps anyone

    1. Sam posted Avatar
      Sam posted

      Hi,
      Its a very helpful script, pardon my naivety but where would one add the url for the mobile site to which we want to redirect to?
      Thanks for the example.

      1. Avatar
        Anonymous

        Replace the “/mobiledirectoryhere/” portion of that line.

        1. Nadir H Avatar
          Nadir H

          Ohryan,
          Ya did that and your script surely helps. My earlier question was referring to http://www.gpf-comics.com/mobile_rewrite_tests.txt script where it was not obvious where to pit the url unlike your helpful script. Though I did check out basic rewrite tutorials and those helped as well. Your script is kool.

  21. Andrew Avatar
    Andrew

    Much appreciated. For anyone who can’t get this working right off the bat, add:
    RewriteEngine On 

    …before the first line.

    Andrew.

  22. cwhitmore Avatar
    cwhitmore

    This is the best (and lightest way) I’ve seen to do this yet.  Nice snippet!  Quick question though…

    How do you handle a person that wants to view the full or “desktop” version of the site on their mobile device?

    1. Avatar
      Anonymous

      Thanks! 

      The easiest way to allow a person to view the desktop version would be to allow them to opt-out of the mobile redirect with a cookie. 1. Create a link that sets a cookie (server-side or onclick with javascript); 2. check for the cookie in the re-write rule (See doc).

      1. Arky Sparky Avatar
        Arky Sparky

        In regards to desktop view, there is a better way then cookie staff (what if cookies are disabled?), simply go for MVC and create 3 pages: one for desktop in root (index.php with htaccess staff for mobile), second for mobile with htaccess for desktop (/mobile/index.php – here put link with get var, holding desktop value and check its value in controller class for mobile, if it is true go to third point), third create folder FULL VIEW or whatever, and here in htaccess override rule from root htaccess (without that mobile detector) and put path to MVC classes from root: _autoload($class_name) ./class_name.php”;}. Just for those who are not familiar with MVC, we have the same index.php as in root and still using main classes, just htaccess is different! Good Luck

        1. Arky Sparky Avatar
          Arky Sparky

          Well well Arky, you re improving your English, should be stuff. Winnipeg? I know who Johnny Kent was! Keep going Canadians!!!!

  23. mike Avatar
    mike

    Hi Ryan, Like some others in this discussion, I’m having problems with a “Too many redirects” error when trying to access my mobile subdirectory. Here is my code:

    RewriteEngine onRewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} “android|blackberry|ipad|iphone|ipod|iemobile|opera mobile|palmos|webos|googlebot-mobile” [NC]RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /http://marilynhorsch.com/mobilesite/mobilesite.html/[L,R=302]

    Any help is appreciated.
    Thanks

    1. Will Avatar
      Will

      Hi Mike,

      This worked for me:

      RewriteEngine On
      #redirect mobile browsers
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*iPhone.*$
      RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://smstaging.stanford.edu/pem/mobile/index.html [R=301]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*iPad.*$
      RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://smstaging.stanford.edu/pem/mobile/index.html [R=301]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*BlackBerry.*$
      RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://smstaging.stanford.edu/pem/mobile/index.html [R=301]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^.*Palm.*$
      RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://smstaging.stanford.edu/pem/mobile/index.html [R=301]

      Inside the new mobile folder I created a new .htaccess file which has the RewriteEngine Off so that there wouldn’t be the redirect issue. However this won’t cover all mobile devices. If you have a better solution let me know.

  24. Ibrazil Avatar
    Ibrazil

    Thank you for the simple implementation. However I am trying to implement the above code with a htaccess code used to eliminate the file extension from the webpage filename. see below:

    RewriteEngine on
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^XXXXXX.com$ [OR]
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.XXXXXX.com$
    RewriteRule ^/?$ “http://www.XXXXXX.com” [R=301,L]
    RewriteRule (.*).htm$ $1.php [L,QSA]
    Options +FollowSymLinks
    Options -Multiviews
    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteRule ^([^.]+)$ $1.php [NC,L]
    RewriteEngine On
    Options -MultiViews

    With the above code I am unable to visit the mobile website in a subdirectory called m.XXXXXX.com

    any suggestions

    1. Avatar
      Anonymous

      I’m not sure I understand the question. Is the redirect not working? Or the filename rewrite not working on the redirect page?

      1. Ibrazil Avatar
        Ibrazil

         Thanks for the reply. The above code works for eliminating the file extension when navigating to a webpage.

        e.g. http://www.xxxxxx.com/page instead of http://www.xxxxxx.com/page.php …

        How would I integrate the mobile redirect with this code?  

  25. William Vega Avatar
    William Vega

    Really great post, thanks!!

    Add this code to an .htaccess file in the directory in which the redirect is pointing to and the redirect loop will stop.

    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/(stats/|missing.html|failed_auth.html|error/).* [NC]
    RewriteRule .* – [L]
     
    RewriteCond %{ENV:REDIRECT_STATUS} 200
    RewriteRule .* – [L]

    Not my work.
    http://www.askapache.com/htaccess/mod_rewrite-tips-and-tricks.html

    1. Mike Morris Avatar
      Mike Morris

      I was having looping redirect issues with looping on a site built using a PHP framework that redirects all $1 page requests to /index.php/$1 (CodeIgniter, WordPress and many other content management systems and frameworks do this). The above fixes weren’t working for me (was having issues with resources not loading) and putting a separate .htaccess file in a subdirectory wasn’t really an option because of the site structure, but built this solution that seems to work well:

      #modified mobile redirect
      RewriteCond $1 !^(index.php|_assets|robots.txt|favicon.ico|apple-touch-icon|mobile)RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} “android|blackberry|ipad|iphone|ipod|iemobile|opera mobile|palmos|symbian|webos” [NC]RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /mobile/ [L,R=301]

      #stock framework/CMS redirect
      RewriteCond $1 !^(index.php|_assets|robots.txt|favicon.ico|apple-touch-icon)RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php/$1 [L] 

      Note that the RewriteCond from the CMS has been repurposed in the mobile detection snippet with the addition of the /mobile path to the end to prevent looping or resource request redirection. The snippet is slightly modified, I added symbian to the user-agent string to detect Nokia browsers (still quite popular outside the US) and changed the redirect to a permanent (301) redirect.

  26. Anthony T. Avatar
    Anthony T.

    I am sooooo a NuB to this. I need to know what line to put into .htaccess for the following.

    I have the regular site (flash).  but need any and all ios to goto /ios/index.html

    Am I totally missing something from your main post?

    Thank  you, I have been looking for assistance for a few months. (now know it is doable in .htaccess file.

    btw.  (using standard html, no php)

  27. Will Avatar
    Will

    Hi Ryan,

    I’ve been having a few issues with implementing your solution. My .htaccess file is:

    ————————————-
    AddType video/ogg  .ogvAddType video/mp4  .mp4AddType video/webm .webmSetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI .(og[gv]|mp4|m4v|webm)$ no-gzip dont-varyRewriteEngine OnRewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^http://mywebsite/mobile.html.*$RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} “android|blackberry|ipad|iphone|ipod|iemobile|opera mobile|palmos|webos|googlebot-mobile” [NC]RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://mywebsite/mobile.html [L,R=302]
    ————————————-

    (without the dashes in the .htaccess file). The 4 top lines are because I am using “Video or Everybody” to play my video on the website and it requires that in there. I have been using an iPhone to test and it gives me the following message:

    “Safari cannot open the page because too many redirects occured”

    But it does successfully take me from the mywebsite/index.html page to the mywebsite/mobile.html page, it just doesn’t render and I get that error message above. Do you know how I can fix this?

  28. Will Avatar
    Will

    Hi Ryan,

    I’ve been having a few issues with implementing your solution. My .htaccess file is:

    ————————————-
    AddType video/ogg  .ogv

    AddType video/mp4  .mp4

    AddType video/webm .webm

    SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI .(og[gv]|mp4|m4v|webm)$ no-gzip dont-vary

    RewriteEngine On

    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^http://smstaging.stanford.edu/pem/mobile.html.*$
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} “android|blackberry|ipad|iphone|ipod|iemobile|opera mobile|palmos|webos|googlebot-mobile” [NC]

    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://smstaging.stanford.edu/pem/mobile.html [L,R=302]

    ————————————-

    (without the dashes in the .htaccess file). The 4 top lines are because I am using “Video or Everybody” to play my video on the website and it requires that in there. I have been using an iPhone to test and it gives me the following message:

    “Safari cannot open the page because too many redirects occured”

    But it does successfully take me from the mywebsite/index.html page to the mywebsite/mobile.html page, it just doesn’t render and I get that error message above. Do you know how I can fix this?

    1. Will Avatar
      Will

      Sorry for posting twice, the .htaccess file came out all in one continuous line on the last post and it wasn’t very easy to read.

  29. Andrew Avatar
    Andrew

    Script works great. But isn’t it considered best practice to allow mobile users to click a link and go to the full non-mobile version of the site? It doesn’t seem like you would be able to do this using this method. Any ideas?

  30. Lrpico Avatar
    Lrpico

    Hi Ryan,
    First, apologies for bumping this up… 😉
    Second, a big thank you for the code, after a hundred different things, I tried this and is the one that works, or sort of…
    Third, is there a way to add detection for Nokia browsers in general?

    Thanks

  31. Mobile Redirect With htaccess

    […] you put in your .htaccess file in the root directory of your web site [inspired by the info found here]. RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !mobile.php.*$ RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} […]

  32. Brian Avatar
    Brian

    Thanks you

    It works like a charm

  33. Nadir Hajiyani Avatar
    Nadir Hajiyani

    Hi,
    The code was working awesome until last the 5 days , folks with firefox 5 have started complaining that they cant get to the regular site on their computer and the code is redirecting them to their mobile site on their computer

    1. Lrpico Avatar
      Lrpico

      I’ve tried the code in almost every possible browser, no a hitch so far… The ONLY “problematic” browser was the Nokia’s handheld homebrew browsers.

      1. Nadir Hajiyani Avatar
        Nadir Hajiyani

        Hey,
        Ya, it was working fine until a bunch of users in firefox started complaining that the website on computer still sends them to mobile website. Here is some data from analytics which shows many firefox5 calls coming in and that increased their number since other times it would mostly be iphone. So I am including that , incase if it helps. I removed the rule for now. Let me if there is a clue.

        [Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT
        6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/5
        35.1 (KHTML, like Gecko)
        Chrome/13.0.782.112 Safar
        i/535.1]

        [Mozilla/5.0 (compatible;
        MSIE 9.0; Windows NT 6.1
        ; WOW64; Trident/5.0)]

        [Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT
        6.1; WOW64; rv:6.0) Gecko
        /20100101 Firefox/6.0]

            [Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT
        6.1; WOW64; rv:5.0) Gecko
        /20100101 Firefox/5.0]
            [Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT
        6.0) AppleWebKit/535.1 (K
        HTML, like Gecko) Chrome/
        13.0.782.112 Safari/535.1]

        [Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh;
        U; Intel Mac OS X 10_6_8;
        en-us) AppleWebKit/533.2
        1.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) V
        ersion/5.0.5 Safari/533.2
        1.1]
        [Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh;
        Intel Mac OS X 10_6_8) Ap
        pleWebKit/534.50 (KHTML,
        like Gecko) Version/5.1 S
        afari/534.50]

            [Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT
        6.1) AppleWebKit/535.1 (K
        HTML, like Gecko) Chrome/
        13.0.782.112 Safari/535.1
        ]

            [Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT
        6.0; rv:6.0) Gecko/201001
        01 Firefox/6.0]

        [Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT
        5.1) AppleWebKit/535.1 (K
        HTML, like Gecko) Chrome/
        13.0.782.112 Safari/535.1]

        1. Lrpico Avatar
          Lrpico

          You sure they’re not using some sort of an User Agent Switcher? Tried my mod of the code with an XP running FF 5, and it worked flawlessly…

  34. Soumendra Jena Avatar
    Soumendra Jena

    Does it work with Motorola Droid ?

    My client said, on Droid, they get the tablet version 🙁

    1. Avatar
      Anonymous

      Yes, the “android” user agent should cover all android devices including the droid.

  35. Avatar
    Anonymous

    It’s good to see this information in your post, i was looking the same but there was not any proper resource, thanx now i have the link which i was looking for my research. . . . . .

    local movers toronto
    north vancouver movers

  36. Stubb Avatar
    Stubb

    This works great except for linking back to view the full site. Obviously it just loops back to the mobile site. Is there a way to set a cookie in the htaccess file to prevent this? Or something else?

    1. Ryan M Long Avatar
      Ryan M Long

      I used a php redirect with a cookie that allows mobile users to access the full website. I also only wanted mobile users to go to the mobile site if they are going to the homepage. (This is because we use QR Codes in printed material and offer many more pages on our full website that are indexed in Google’s mobile SERPs but we don’t have mobile pages available.) To do this, I added this code to the index.php file:

      $mobile = ‘http://mobile.mysite.com/’;

      if ((strstr($_SERVER[‘HTTP_USER_AGENT’], ‘iPhone’)) && empty($_COOKIE[“mobilesitecookie”]) && $_SERVER[‘REQUEST_URI’]==”/”) {
      header(“Location: ” . $mobile);
      }

      And this is the code that I put on the mobile site to make the cookie:

      function set_cookie () {
      document.cookie = ‘mobilesitecookie=mobilesitecookie; domain=.mysite.com;’;
      window.location = ‘http://www.mysite.com/’
      }

      I then added an HTML A tag that triggers the set_cookie function.

      Enjoy!

  37. Joss Vans Avatar
    Joss Vans

    Great !!!! sample
    Thanks , very much , its work GENIAL !!!

  38. Forum Cognostek Avatar
    Forum Cognostek

    Any1 please tell the redirect script for Blackberry storm2 9550 model using javascript.

  39. Engel Ralf Avatar
    Engel Ralf

    Hi,
    i use the above code to deviate a cyber attack coming from a Safari 419.3 browser on a linux system. The only thing is that i can’t visit our sites through safari myself.
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} “Safari|safari|SAFARI|linux|LINUX|Linux” [NC]RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /http://fakedomain.com/ [L,R=302]
    is the code i’m using.
    my safari is v.5.1, could i somehow refine the above code to only block safari 419.3 linux but allow visits from other safari browsers?

  40. Josh Avatar
    Josh

    Why did you include “googlebot-mobile”? The redirect that you are using is specifically geared towards smartphone user agents. The googlebot-mobile user agent was meant for WAP content (feature phones). The newly introduced smartphone googlebot-mobile actually masquerades as an iPhone

  41. Nail Avatar
    Nail

    So, how can we have a “Full Site” link on the mobile version and send the mobile visitor to the full site and keep him there? Cookies? How can we do that with .htaccess?

    1. ohryan Avatar
      ohryan

      In the past, I’ve had the “full site” link go through a script that sets a cookie. Then added a rewritecond to check if the cookie is set: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/mod/mod_rewrite.html#rewritecond

  42. Matt Avatar
    Matt

    This is just what I was looking for to “mobify” my website. Was going to go the responsive route but I feel I can deliver a better experience with a dedicated site. Thanks!

  43. Idel Fuschini Avatar
    Idel Fuschini

    I think the best way is to use my “Apache Mobile Filter” (http://www.apachemobilefilter.org) and mod_rewrite. For example:

    #Configuration AMF Filter
    #
    PerlSetEnv AMFMobileHome /usr/local/AMF
    PerlSetEnv AMFProductionMode true
    PerlSetEnv ServerMemCached localhost:11211

    PerlTransHandler +Apache2::AMFFilter
    # or
    PerlTransHandler +Apache2::AMFFilterMemcached
    RewriteEngine on
    RewriteCond %{ENV:AMF_ISMOBILE} ^true*
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://m.foo.org [R=301,L]

    Take it from: http://wiki.apachemobilefilter.org/index.php/Mod_rewrite_integration

    1. ohryan Avatar
      ohryan

      Hey, this looks pretty snazzy!

      Good solution if you have permissions install an Apache module.

  44. Detect mobile devices using .htaccess | TechnoReaders.com

    […] below code while browsing through one of the blog. This is best way to redirect according to mobile client, and we all know these days mobile […]

  45. Fedor van der Valk Avatar
    Fedor van der Valk

    looks like this works for a lot of people 🙂 I’m going to try this out today.
    thank you very much. in advance 🙂

  46. Jesus de La Garza Avatar
    Jesus de La Garza

    Hi, very useful topic. Thanks for sharing.
    I’ve a question, how can I prevent a couple of subdomains to get detected by this code?

    On those 2 cases (2 subdomains: some.mydomain.com & somemore.mydomain.com) I dont need to get mobile device detection.

    Thanks for your help trying to solve this case.

  47. Ranjit Pradhan Avatar
    Ranjit Pradhan

    Thanks,good discussion. it is really helps a lot .

  48. Ranjit Pradhan Avatar
    Ranjit Pradhan

    I have a question . if one open the mobile version in desktop, then how can it redirect to desktop version.
     

  49. Justin Avatar
    Justin

    How do I incorporate a visit full website link?

  50. ezMaverick [+] Avatar
    ezMaverick [+]

    Work like a charm!

Newer Comments

Leave a Reply

Only people in my network can comment.