How can I internally point to a domain but keep the url with the subdomain constant? - apache

Question

I have a domain www.example.com hosted in one location.
I have created another account with a different hosting provider that allows me to create subdomains: www.test1.example.com and www.test2.example.com
I am putting a custom page for each of the subdomains when the user goes to test1.example.com, test2.example.com....
After the user logs in on this custom page, I want to maintain the subdomain (of test1.example.com) but internally have all requests point to www.example.com.
I am running the custom pages on Apache and the domain pages on Apache Tomcat - I think that using 'mod_rewrite' is the way to go?

Answer 1

Put the following in a .htaccess file in your subdomain's document root:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^test1\.example\.com$
RewriteRule ^/(.*) http://example.com/$1 [redirect,last]
To enable mod_rewrite on a modern Ubuntu web server run this command:
sudo ln -s /etc/apache2/mods-available/rewrite.load /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/rewrite.load
Make sure AllowOverride is set to "All" in your VirtualHost configuration (for example /etc/apache2/sites-available/default):
<Directory /var/www/document/root/>
AllowOverride All
</Directory>
then restart Apache:
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Answer 2

So, basically the answer I found that worked was to use mod_proxy. I enabled that as an Apache module and included the following in my httpd-vhosts.conf file.
NameVirtualHost *:80
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName test1.example.com
DocumentRoot "location_of_the_custom_page"
ErrorLog "logs\errors.log"
<directory "D:\wamp\www\capitalfloat">
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride all
Order Deny,Allow
Deny from all
Allow from all
</directory>
</VirtualHost>
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName localhost2
ServerAlias *.example.com
ErrorLog "logs\errors.log"
ProxyRequests Off
ProxyPreserveHost On
<Proxy *>
Order deny,allow
Allow from all
</Proxy>
ProxyPass / http://www.example.com
ProxyPassReverse / http://www.example.com
</VirtualHost>
I also had to include 'http://www.example.com' and 'test1.example.com' in the Windows Host File (For me, C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts). In my custom login page, the request goes to 'example.com' and all subsequent requests are sent to 'www.example.com' but the url still shows 'test1.example.com/...'