[SOLVED] OC 2.3.0.2 friendly htaccess file

I am battling with redirects to WWW and HTTPS on my site www.ic-express.co.za I am pretty sure they were working, but not anymore. The .htaccess file doesn't seem to do much if I make changes to it. Does anyone have a friendly .htaccess for 2.3.0.2 or can point me in the right direction. There was one that was listed by IPCAM, but it seems to have been removed.

NB! - both my root and admin config files point to https://www.ic-express.co.za as default.

Try this in your .htaccess :

@JNeuhoff - I have implemented your code, but regardless of any .htaccess changes, redirects don't work, so it seems to me that my .htaccess file is for some reason not working.
SEO Friendly URLs are also not working - but are enabled in admin backend.
Below is the .htaccess code?

# 1.To use URL Alias you need to be running apache with mod_rewrite enabled.

# 2. In your opencart directory rename htaccess.txt to .htaccess.

# For any support issues please visit: http://www.opencart.com

Options +FollowSymlinks

# Prevent Directoy listing

Options -Indexes

# Prevent Direct Access to files

<FilesMatch "(?i)((\.tpl|\.ini|\.log|(?<!robots)\.txt))">

Require all denied

## For apache 2.2 and older, replace "Require all denied" with these two lines :

# Order deny,allow

# Deny from all

</FilesMatch>

# SEO URL Settings

RewriteEngine On

# If your opencart installation does not run on the main web folder make sure you folder it does run in ie. / becomes /shop/


RewriteBase /

# redirect from non-https or non-www to https://www
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\. [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(?:www\.)?(.+)$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^ https://www.%1%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L,NE]

RewriteRule ^sitemap.xml$ index.php?route=extension/feed/google_sitemap [L]

RewriteRule ^googlebase.xml$ index.php?route=extension/feed/google_base [L]

RewriteRule ^system/download/(.*) index.php?route=error/not_found [L]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !.*\.(ico|gif|jpg|jpeg|png|js|css)

#RewriteRule ^([^?]*) index.php?_route_=$1 [L,QSA]

RewriteRule ^([^?]*) index.php [L,QSA]


### Additional Settings that may need to be enabled for some servers

### Uncomment the commands by removing the # sign in front of it.

### If you get an "Internal Server Error 500" after enabling any of the following settings, restore the # as this means your host doesn't allow that.



# 1. If your cart only allows you to add one item at a time, it is possible register_globals is on. This may work to disable it:

# php_flag register_globals off



# 2. If your cart has magic quotes enabled, This may work to disable it:

# php_flag magic_quotes_gpc Off



# 3. Set max upload file size. Most hosts will limit this and not allow it to be overridden but you can try

# php_value upload_max_filesize 999M



# 4. set max post size. uncomment this line if you have a lot of product options or are getting errors where forms are not saving all fields

# php_value post_max_size 999M



# 5. set max time script can take. uncomment this line if you have a lot of product options or are getting errors where forms are not saving all fields

# php_value max_execution_time 200



# 6. set max time for input to be recieved. Uncomment this line if you have a lot of product options or are getting errors where forms are not saving all fields

# php_value max_input_time 200



# 7. disable open_basedir limitations

# php_admin_value open_basedir none

In that case ask your webhost as to why it ignores your .htaccess directives. Maybe they haven't installed mod_rewrite.

OK, in case this helps anybody in future. The actual .htaccess file that was created in Notepad +++ and being uploaded by Filezilla was corrupt in that the formatting was removed. There were no line breaks etc. so it was unreadable by the system.
So, I edited the file at the server level using Filezilla/edit to include all of the formatting and everything started working correctly.
Perhaps somebody could enlighten or have an explanation for this, but nevertheless, I am chuffed that it is working now.

That's why I always use the binary format in filezilla uploads.