redirect code

[wallaby]

Hi,
I am fairly new to coding so please bear with me.
I have a situation that I need to resolve quickly and I think a redirect or rewrite will be the correct option.

We have a website that we had to move from unexpectedly (poor host reseller) and rebuild our site on a new host and different shopping cart. basically it was a complete rebuild.

The problem now is that although we moved two weeks ago, we are still not indexed on the new site. Site:domainname comes up with old links that are now 404.

Old links have the url structure .com//item_295/Cancer-Awareness-Necklace-with-Peridot.htm. It's the item_ that is throwing me.

Having scoured the net I managed to write this code, which of course does not work, then I found this forum

this is what I put into .htaccess, where did I go wrong?

RewriteRule ^item_([0-9])/([a-z]+)\.html$ /index.php?main_page=products_all [R=301,L]

thanks in advance

[wallaby]

perhaps no-one understood the question so I'll ask it a different way. Why did this give me 500 error?

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^item_88/Susan-Pink-Ribbon-Breast-Cancer-Awareness-jewelry-magnet.htm $ index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=103_104&products_id=310 [R,NC]

this is a ZenCart site on a Hostgator server

[Phred]

This will redirect all visitors to the old site to the index page of the new site:
(if that is what you're trying to do)

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.newdomain.com? [R=301,L]

If you moved to another host, why aren't you using the same domain name?

[Macek]

Okay, I've got a code that places a button on the page, but when you click the button, it doesn't take you to the page it's supposed to.
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