Redirect wordpress uploads folder to s3 bucket using .htaccess

Question

I'm trying to redirect my uploads folder to my s3 bucket using htaccess in wordpress however it's not working. All the images on my site are still getting served locally from the server instead of linking to the bucket.

This is my htaccess file:

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>

# END WordPress

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^wp-content/uploads/(.*)$ https://BUCKET.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/$1 [L]

# BEGIN W3TC CDN
<FilesMatch "\.(ttf|ttc|otf|eot|woff|font.css)$">
<IfModule mod_headers.c>
    Header set Access-Control-Allow-Origin "*"
</IfModule>
</FilesMatch>
# END W3TC CDN

Answer 1

There are a couple of problems. You need to put the rule ABOVE your wordpress rule because wordpress rules route every request to index.php. Next you will need to use mod_proxy with the use of the [P] flag because regardless of not specifying redirect in the rewriterule, Apache will do it anyway because the substitution URL is a new domain. So Apache will perform a Redirect. So using [P] flag should proxy the content instead of doing a redirect. This should accomplish what you need.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^wp-content/uploads/(.*)$ https://BUCKET.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/$1 [P]

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>

# END WordPress