user directory redirect, .htaccess

[bwalker99]

Hi, I'm relatively inexperienced with .htaccess redirects, but I've done a few. Our website was recently relocated offsite. The old web server featured user directories that could be reached using the followig format (emphasis on the tilda(~):

http://www.domain.edu/~user.

Before transferring the domain I tested some redirect rules on the new server to make sure that they would work, and they did. Here is the format I used:
RewriteRule ^~user

http://newdomain

(Note:Keep in mind that each user established their own site so not all of the ~users moved to the same

http://newdomain,

so I couldn't just do a general rule for all.)

Once the domain was redirected to the new server, this format worked for a few of them, but most of them returned a 404 error and none of them would redirect. I've been desperately looking for a remedy, as currently there is no effective redirect in place, and no luck so far. Here are some of the other formats I've tried:

RewriteBase /~user
RewriteCond %{

http://newurl}

-d
RewriteRule ^(.+[^/])$ $1/ [R]##I think this just adds the trailing slash
###### DID NOT WORK


#RewriteRule ^/~([^/]+)/user$

http://newurl

[R]
###### DID NOT WORK

Any suggestions would be GREATLY appreciated.

 

[bwalker99]

I wanted to add that I found the following on apache.org which specifically relates to my problem, but I'm not sure how to adapt it for use on a case by case basis...

Description:
Some sites with thousands of users usually use a structured homedir layout, i.e. each homedir is in a subdirectory which begins for instance with the first character of the username. So, /~foo/anypath is /home/f/foo/.

http://www/anypath

while /~bar/anypath is /home/b/bar/.

http://www/anypath.

Solution:
We use the following ruleset to expand the tilde URLs into exactly the above layout.

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^/~(([a-z])[a-z0-9]+)(.*) /home/$2/$1/.

http://www$3