Trouble creating .htaccess re-write rules

I want to change example.com/xxx/* to example.com/yyy/* . I have spent a lot of time on this but can't seem to figure it out. Here is what I started with:

Code:

---

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

---

And here is what I've tried added:

Code:

---

Options +FollowSymLinks 

# 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]
 
RewriteRule example.com/xxx/ ./yyy/$1 
RewriteRule example.com/aaa/ ./bbb/$1 

</IfModule>

# END WordPress

---

The code doesn't seem to do anything. What am I doing wrong?

Thank you.

@guinnee, I think you need a 301 redirect for what you're trying to accomplish, not mod_rewrite.

...though, I could be wrong, I have an .htaccess issue myself.

Also, sorry if you feel I'm hijacking your thread, but since mine is a similar issue, it's probably best I post here rather than start another.

My problem is that I want to ignore anything longer than what I'm rewriting,rather than throwing a 404 error.

So: example.com/topic/correct-value/but-this-throws-an-error/

Should strip: but-this-throws-an-error/

This is what I have:

Code:

---

RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^tema/$ topics.php [L]
RewriteRule ^topic/$ topics.php [L]
RewriteRule ^topic/(.*)/$ topic.php?tag=$1 [L]
RewriteRule ^tema/(.*)/$ topic.php?tag=$1&language=es [L]

---

I should also mention I plan to add a third param to the query string, "page="

so ultimately: example.com/topic/correct-value/1/ <--(last param numeric only) will be allowed, anything else striped and redirected to /correct-value/