I'm building a site in codeigniter. I have a series of rewrite conditions & rules in the .htaccess file. The first set of rules turns SSL on or off depending on the first segment of the uri.

Then it loops through again & if it finds a match, redirects the page appropriately. If there is no match, and the uri does NOT start with any of the strings listed, it redirects you to another page. If no conditions are met, it goes to the index page.

The problem is with my first set of rules that turn SSL on & off. I want to specify that the uri must START with admin or secure. But if I add the ^ to the beginning of the string, everything breaks. Here's what I have:

```
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/?(admin|secure)
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]

RewriteCond %{HTTPS} on 
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/?(admin|secure)
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]

...specific rewrites here
RewriteRule ^secure-form1$ secure/contract/secure-form1 [L]
RewriteRule ^secure$ secure/article/secure [L]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.example.com$ 
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/(admin|form|secure|page)/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php/page/article/$1 [L]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php/$1 [L]

```

If I keep the ^ symbol in the first 2 rewrite conditions (https on & off) then
 <http://www.example.com/secure>
rewrites to
 <https://www.example.com/index.php/secure/article/secure>
which is the last rewrite rule. The url actually changes to this in the browser.

If I take the ^ symbol out of the first 2 rewrite conditions, then it goes to the right page. But I do need to specify the beginning of the uri because there are other pages that have "secure" in the middle of the uri (and following a slash) that should NOT use SSL.

I can't figure this one out.