.htaccess Redirection Problems

[George1024]

Hello everybodies!
I've created a dynamic image that my website users can put in their forum signature, but most forums don't support a .php file as an image.
The image is http://cybergeorge.freehostia.com/gr...r/?user=George (actually index.php?user=George), and I wanted it so that when the user types http://cybergeorge.freehostia.com/gr...tar/George.gif it will redirect to the original file (George.gif doesnt actually exist).
I tried using a .htaccess file, but George.gif AND all other files (existent or not) come up with 500 Internal Server Error.
The contents of the .htaccess file is:

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^(.+)\.gif$ index.php?user=$1 #[r=301,nc]

I'm pretty good at PHP, but fairly new to .htaccess. Could someone help me please?

[George1024]

Anyone? No?

[Shotgun Ninja]

Nope. Doesn't look like it. Not very many people on here know .htaccess that well, aside from accompaniments to php-based webpage functions. I only very recently learned what it is. Try the PHP forums. Or ask Twey.

[BLiZZaRD]

You could just use the single line .htaccess Redirect rule.

Redirect /olddirectory/oldfile.html http://yoursite.com/newdirect

This is important to note the 3 separate parts, the command (Redirect), the old file location and the new file location. The new file location MUST be a complete url, while the old one can be a partial. This is also all on one line with each of the 3 parts separated by a single space.

[George1024]

Yeh, but it needs to be partial on the source and the destination URLs, because George.gif is meant to redirect to index.php?user=George, and Blah.gif is meant to redirect to index.php?user=Blah aswell.

[ItsMeOnly]

I think the regexp is wrong, (.+) specifically, anyway, from what I use and works:

RedirectMatch /(.*).gif http://yoursite.com/index.php?user=$1

if the * is too radical, just make it to [0-9a-zA-Z_]

[BLiZZaRD]

Yeh, but it needs to be partial on the source and the destination URLs, because George.gif is meant to redirect to index.php?user=George, and Blah.gif is meant to redirect to index.php?user=Blah aswell.

If 'Me's advice doesn't help, how many images do you have that need redirecting? Because you can use the single line one like I showed for each file, being very specific for each one. However, if you have a butt-ton of them it would be pointless

[George1024]

Yeh, every user that signs up to my website gets their own dynamic image so that wouldn't really work.

Me's advice was the closest I've got to success
But it redirects to http://cybergeorge.freehostia.com/greenhat/avatar/index.php%3fuser=greenhat/avatar/George instead of http://cybergeorge.freehostia.com/greenhat/avatar/index.php?user=George.
I tried removing the url in the .htaccess file

RedirectMatch /(.*).gif http://cybergeorge.freehostia.com/greenhat/avatar/index.php?user=$1

But that just comes up with the Internal Server Error again.

[ItsMeOnly]

try doublequotes in redirect then:

RedirectMatch /(.*).gif "http://cybergeorge.freehostia.com/greenhat/avatar/index.php?user=$1"

[George1024]

Hmmmmmmm, the quotes didn't seem do change anything.