How can I have redirect or make an alias for my websites directories? - apache

Real directory structure:
http://example.com/directory1/directory2/directory3/hiddendirectory/directory4/
I need the file to open as:
http://example.com/hiddendirectory/directory4/
in the browser, but in reality the directory still be in the first location.
I am on shared hosting with hostgator and do not have full privileges so I cannot run any scripts.
I've done some research and I've messed around trying create an alias, but I can't get anything to work.
Here is what I put in the .htaccess file:
Alias /hiddendirectory/directory4 /directory1/directory2/directory3/hiddendirectory/directory4
But I always get a 500 server error. Any advice would be appreciated.

Alias directive runs on the Server config context not in htaccess.
In htaccess you can use mod_rewrite to rewrite your dirs.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^hiddendir/dir4/?$ /dir1/dir2/dir3/hiddendir/dir4 [NC,L]
This will rewrite
/hiddendir/dir4/
to
/dir1/dir2/dir3/hiddendir/dir4

Related

How to edit .htaccess Server-wide

I use WHM for hosting which allows me to make many cpanel accounts. Every time I make a cpanel account it has a new .htaccess file inside public_html with the same code inside
I want to be able to change this code to mine but not on one cpanel but rather on all. so every new cPanel has my edited code automatically when made rather then editing it manually.
I cant seem to find the default .htaccess on my server. How can I go about doing this?
I use litespeed also.
tried to find the .htaccess config on server and inside whm
I think there is such thing as a "global htaccess"
for WHM/cPanel, the closest thing you can do is Include that can affect all vhost
not sure what you want to do with htaccess, but I assume it should also work in Apache conf file
e.g.
/etc/apache2/conf.d/userdata/ssl/2_4/deny.conf
/etc/apache2/conf.d/userdata/std/2_4/deny.conf
put content like
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} xmlrpc.php
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]
</IfModule>
restart Apache/LSWS, then this will make all vhost's /xmlrpc.php end up in 403 error.
ref: https://docs.cpanel.net/ea4/apache/modify-apache-virtual-hosts-with-include-files/

Generic .htaccess for multiple websites stored in subdirectories

My development environment is set up for using a single host (localhost). I am developing multiple websites on my machine, each stored under its own directory like this:
/var/www/site1
/var/www/site2
...
The document root is set to /var/www on my machine.
I am using URL rewriting for most of these websites and most of the .htaccess files will rewrite a sub-directory to GET parameters in different ways like this:
http://localhost/site1/home/red -> http://localhost/site1/index.php?page=home&p1=red
http://localhost/site2/index/param1/param2/param3 -> http://localhost/site2/index.php?page=index&p1=param1&p2=param2&p3=param3
I also tend to copy some of these websites under different directories and, when I do that, I have to make a lot of changes in the .htaccess files for the website that I'm copying.
I would like to know if there is a way to define a constant that contains the website's root directory (not the host's document root) and how can that be used with the rewrite rule so that I would need to change only one line of code (setting this constant to a different value) when copying a website.
Putting this in a different form, is there a way to perform rewrites that relate to a website root instead of a host / %{HTTP_HOST} (i.e. the "host" for the website being localhost/site1 instead of localhost) and how can this be done?
I have tried removing the host from each request at the beginning of the script and prepending it back at the end of the script, but this does not work with rewrite rules that use the [L] option.
Thank you!
Regards,
Lucian
You could make an htaccess file with rules like this:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /site1/
RewriteRule ^([^/]+)/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/([^/]+) index.php?page=$1&p1=$2&p2=$3&p4=$4 [L,QSA]
And put this in the directory /var/www/site1, and if you want for it to apply to site2, change the RewriteBase and put the rules in /var/www/site2.

Changing a file's URL without physically moving it

I have a site, running Linux + Apache.
I have a file in my root directory, let's say file.php.
I want the URL to the file to be "domain.com/newdir/file.php", but I don't want to actually create the newdir and move the file there because it would be a huge hassle to update many many links all over my site.
Is there a way to accomplish this, meaning making the file accessible by the new URL without moving it?
Thank you.
On this site: workwith.me, you can find information about .htaccess and mod_rewrite. For your example you have to make a file called .htaccess and put it in the root directory. The file should contain these directives:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^newdir/file.php$ /file.php [L]
You can do this for every file you want to rename.
Four possible solutions I can think of:
If your OS supports it, create a symlink:
mkdir /home/foo/htdocs/newdir
ln -s /home/foo/htdocs/file.php home/foo/htdocs/newdir/file.php
... and make sure Apache is configured to follow them:
Options FollowSymLinks
Create an Alias or AliasMatch (probably overkill)
Good old mod_rewrite:
RewriteEngine One
RewriteRule ^newdir/file\.php$ file.php [L]
Ugly: use a custom 404 error page with a PHP script that checks $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'].
I guess the standard solutions are #1 and #3.

htaccess rewrite question

I want to rewrite the url http://mydomain/myapp/fakefolder to http://mydomain/myapp/index.php
I tried the following rule but thats not working
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^fakefolder$ index.php
The .htaccess file is located inside myapp.
Kindly help
Thanks
vineet
To begin with, your folder is not called vineetstore: it's called fakefolder.
The corrected rule works for me so I'd dare say your Apache installation is not configured to read .htaccess files in such location. You can easily test that: make a syntax error on purpose and see whether your site crashes.
Find your virtual host or site definition and make sure you have this directive:
AllowOverride All

mod_rewrite to absolute path in .htaccess - turning up 404

I want to map a number of directories in a URL:
www.example.com/manual
www.example.com/login
to directories outside the web root.
My web root is
/www/htdocs/customername/site
the manual I want to redirect to is in
/www/customer/some_other_dir/manual
In mod_alias, this would be equal to
Alias /manual /www/customer/some_other_dir/manual
but as I have access only to .htaccess, I can't use Alias, so I have to use mod_rewrite.
What I have got right now after this question is the following:
RewriteRule ^manual(/(.*))?$ /www/htdocs/customername/manual/$2 [L]
this works in the sense that requests are recognized and redirected properly, but I get a 404 that looks like this (note the absolute path):
The requested URL /www/htdocs/customername/manual/resourcename.htm
was not found on this server.
However, I have checked with PHP: echo file_exists(...) and that file definitely exists.
why would this be? According to the mod_rewrite docs, this is possible, even in a .htaccess file. I understand that when doing mod_rewrite in .htaccess, there will be an automated prefix, but not to absolute paths, will it?
It shouldn't be a rights problem either: It's not in the web root, but within the FTP tree to which only one user, the main FTP account, has access.
I can change the web root in the control panel anytime, but I want this to work the way I described.
This is shared hosting, so I have no access to the error logs.
I just checked, this is not a wrongful 301 redirection, just an internal rewrite.
In .htaccess, you cannot rewrite to files outside the wwwroot.
You need to have a symbolic link within the webroot that points to the location of the manual.
Then in your .htaccess you need the line:
Options +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch
or maybe a little more blindly
Options +FollowSymlinks
Then you can
RewriteRule ^manual(/(.*))?$ /www/htdocs/customername/site/manual/$2 [L]
where manual under site is a link to /www/customer/some_other_dir/manual
You create the symlink on the command line with:
ln -s /www/htdocs/customername/site/manual /www/customer/some_other_dir/manual
But I imagine you're on shared hosting without shell access, so look into creating symbolic links within CPanel,Webmin, or whatever your admin interface is. There are php/cgi scripts that do it as well. Of course, you're still limited to the permissions that the host has given you. If they don't allow you to follow symlinks as a policy, you cannot override that within your .htaccess.
AFAIK mod_rewrite works at the 'protocol' level (meaning on the wire HTTP). So I suspect you are getting HTTP 302 with your directory path in the location.
So I'm afraid you might be stuck unless.. your hosting lets you follow symbolic links; so you can link to that location (assuming you have shell access or this is possible using FTP or your control panel) under your current document root.
Edit: It actually mentions URL-file phase hook in the docs so now I suspect the directory directives aren't allowing enough permissions.
This tells you what you need to know.
The requested URL /www/htdocs/customername/manual/resourcename.htm
was not found on this server.
It interprets RewriteRule ^manual(/(.*))?$ /www/htdocs/customername/manual/$2 [L] to mean rewrite example.com/manual/ as if it were example.com/www/htdocs/customername/manual/.
Try
RewriteRule ^manual(/(.*))?$ /customername/manual/$2 [L]
instead.