.htaccess in subfolder doesn't work - apache

Question

I'm hosting my site on Godaddy server.
On the server I have 5 sites, each site on individual folder.
for example: "webroot/site1"
I directed specific domain to the specific folder on the server "/site1"
The problem:
I tried to make a RewriteRule with .htaccess in the subfolder but it keeps telling me 404 not found.
This is the .htaccess:
RewriteEngine On
this works fine:
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example.com
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301]
this redirect to 404 page:
#rewirite categories only
RewriteRule ^category/([0-9]+)/.*$ /category.php?c_id=$1 [L,QSA]
this url works perfect:
www.example.com/category.php?id=1
this url doesn't work and redirect to 404 page
www.example.com/category/1/blalba
More details:
The other 4 folders are word press sites.
In the webroot there is another wordpress site.
In the webroot there is an empty htaccess file.
I already tried to do
I already tried to do:
RewriteRule ^category/([0-9]+)/.*$ /site1/category.php?c_id=$1 [L,QSA]
EDIT:
I don't have category folder is just for the URL I want that it will redirect me to category.php with the id parameter
This is the error I get:
Not Found
The requested URL /site1/category/1/area-rugs was not found on this server.
Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

Answer 1

The RewriteRule will need to be in the htaccess file in the root folder of the website.
E.g. if the directory structure is something like this:
/webroot/site1.com/
/webroot/site1.com/.htaccess
/webroot/site1.com/index.php
/webroot/site1.com/category.php
I'd have this code in the .htaccess file in site1.com:
RewriteEngine On
# Force www
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^site1.com
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.site1.com/$1 [R=301]
# Handle categories
RewriteRule ^category/([0-9]+) /category.php?c_id=$1 [L,QSA]