Apache config to direct all requests to the same page - apache

I am creating a custom web server that is designed to serve a single page, regardless of the request URL:
- www.example.com/
- www.example.com/spam/eggs/spam/?ID=eggs
- foo.example.com/
- ...
I am using a wildcard DNS entry to handle the subdomains, but I'm wondering about the best way to handle the page requests.
My first thought was simply to have no pages on the site and create a custom 404 page which was the page I wanted to serve, but I thought that losing an error page might have problems in the future, not to mention sending a 404 error to the client might have effects I am not aware of. Should I be using mod-rewrite instead?
How would you do this? 404, mod_rewrite, or?

I'll use this as an answer
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php/$1 [L]
</IfModule>
<IfModule !mod_rewrite.c>
ErrorDocument 404 /index.php
</IfModule>

Related

.htaccess skips mod_rewrite and directs to ErrorDocument 404

I have the following .htaccess which works wonderfully on a few websites of mine. However, I have uploaded it to another website (on the same host, different domain) and it is now defaulting to the error 404 page; which is displaying correctly.
Example URL: https://www.example.ca/resources-and-links/documents/
The .htaccess first checks to see if there is a actual .php file with first sub-directory, in the example resources-and-links.php. If it does exists it will serve up that page and break down the rest of the sub-directories into the query strings provided.
If the resources-and-link.php doesn't exsits, it directs it to the content.php to check it against pages in the database and serve it if the url matches one of that in the database. If it doesn't the content.php page shows a custom error 404 page.
This works on a sub-domain of said website https://sub.example.com which runs the cms system I built but not the root domain and as said before; shows the ErrorDocument instead. As well, I've used this same .htaccess on many of my other websites without a problem.
I used PHP to show that mod_rewrite is available so are there any reasons why it would not work on the root domain? Why is it skipping straight to the ErrorDocument and serving /404.php?
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/([^/]*)
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/%1.php -f
RewriteRule ^([^/]*)(/([^/]*))?(/([^/]*))?(/([^/]*))?(/([^/]*)) /$1.php?ax=$3&do=$5&third=$7&fourth=$9 [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z]*)/(.*)$ /content.php?url=$1/$2 [L]
Options +FollowSymLinks
ErrorDocument 404 /404.php
</IfModule>

Problems redirecting from a 403 using .htaccess (Yourls)

I'm using a php app called Yourls. It's a self-hosted url shortener and it's pretty great, I'm happy with its overall functionality. Due to the nature of its development however there isn't much in the way of support. Let's pretend the base url is af.to, where a shortened url would be af.to/goo that might redirect to whatever url is defined by 'goo'. The problem I'm facing is that if someone goes to af.to, they end up on a 403-Forbidden. I'd rather the client is redirected to a specific url instead. I have already picked up a plugin for Yourls which redirects to a url when a shortlink is not found or mis-typed, but this does not cover the base of af.to
I attempted to put in a 403 redirect in the .htaccess, but that broke the whole yourls script resulting in a 500 server error.
Current .htaccess looks like this:
# BEGIN YOURLS
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^.*$ /yourls-loader.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END YOURLS
Any help on what I need to do?
Thank you.
The RewriteCond blocks tell the RewriteRule to skip existing files / folders. When you go to http://af.to/, the root folder exists : no redirection. The apache server doesn't find any index.html (or index.php) file, isn't allowed to list the content of the folder, give up and returns a 403 Forbidden.
You can create the index.html file to show some content or you can add these lines to redirect to an other url :
# just after RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^/$ http://my-compagny.com/ [L,R=301]

Symfony2 htaccess mod rewrite issue

I've been having this issue for quite some time. Right now we are using a shared hosting plan and have four domains, one of which points to a symfony project. My goal is simply to omit having the app.php included in the URL. Without any .htaccess applied, all domains work flawlessly and when trying to navigate to the symfony domain I simply get a directory listing instead of having the page render, unless I include the app.php in the URL.
When applying the below htaccess, all non-symfony related domains show a 500 error and the one symfony related domain renders successfully, without the app.php in the URL. My goal at this point is to modify the htaccess so that all non-symfony related domains render successfully as they did before, while still maintaining the below .htacces to omit the app.php from the Symfony related project.
I appreciate any suggestions on how to resolve this issue. Thanks in advance!
.htaccess
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine On
# Explicitly disable rewriting for front controllers
RewriteRule ^app.php - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
# Change below before deploying to production
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /app.php [QSA,L]
</IfModule>
Replace the line :
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
With :
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f
RewriteRule .? - [L]

How would I go about creating a mod_rewrite that redirects to launch.php?i=/the/url/that/they/want?

So if the user types mydomain.com/dashboard, the document the server actually sends them is /launch.php?i=/dashboard.
The one caveat is that I would like to leave requests for
/flags
/people
/posters
/css
/icons
/images
/libraries
/patterns
alone, and they should request the actual folder.
How would I create such a mod_rewrite?
This is the .htaccess file for the CakePHP Framework.
Please replace the index.php and ?url= to fit your needs.
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?url=$1 [QSA,L]
</IfModule>
The "!-d" tells Apache to follow existing folders and "!-f" to follow existing files.
Everything else is channelled through index.php
As suggested in a comment, you have to be aware that if it's not working it could be because mod_rewrite is not enabled and you'll not get an error stating that fact, you'll probably only have a HTTP 404.

How do I ignore a directory in mod_rewrite?

I'm trying to have the modrewrite rules skip the directory vip. I've tried a number of things as you can see below, but to no avail.
# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
#RewriteRule ^vip$ - [PT]
RewriteRule ^vip/.$ - [PT]
#RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/vip
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress
How do I get modrewrite to entirely ignore the /vip/ directory so that all requests pass directly to the folder?
Update:
As points of clarity:
It's hosted on Dreamhost
The folders are within a wordpress directory
the /vip/ folder contains a webdav .htaccess etc (though I dont think this is important
Try putting this before any other rules.
RewriteRule ^vip - [L,NC]
It will match any URI beginning vip.
The - means do nothing.
The L means this should be last rule; ignore everything following.
The NC means no-case (so "VIP" is also matched).
Note that it matches anything beginning vip. The expression ^vip$ would match vip but not vip/ or vip/index.html. The $ may have been your downfall. If you really want to do it right, you might want to go with ^vip(/|$) so you don't match vip-page.html
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
This says if it's an existing file or a directory don't touch it. You should be able to access site.com/vip and no rewrite rule should take place.
The code you are adding, and all answers that are providing Rewrite rules/conditions are useless! The default WordPress code already does everything that you should need it to:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
Those lines say "if it's NOT an existing file (-f) or directory (-d), pass it along to WordPress. Adding additional rules, not matter how specific or good they are, is redundant--you should already be covered by the WordPress rules!
So why aren't they working???
The .htaccess in the vip directory is throwing an error. The exact same thing happens if you password protect a directory.
Here is the solution:
ErrorDocument 401 /err.txt
ErrorDocument 403 /err.txt
Insert those lines before the WordPress code, and then create /err.txt. This way, when it comes upon your WebDAV (or password protected directory) and fails, it will go to that file, and get caught by the existing default WordPress condition (RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f).
In summary, the final solution is:
ErrorDocument 401 /misc/myerror.html
ErrorDocument 403 /misc/myerror.html
# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress
I posted more about the cause of this problem in my specific situation, involving Wordpress and WebDAV on Dreamhost, which I expect many others to be having on my site.
You mentioned you already have a .htaccess file in the directory you want to ignore - you can use
RewriteEngine off
In that .htaccess to stop use of mod_rewrite (not sure if you're using mod_rewrite in that folder, if you are then that won't help since you can't turn it off).
Try replacing this part of your code:
RewriteRule ^vip/.$ - [PT]
...with the following:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(vip) [NC]
That should fix things up.
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^pilot/
is the way to do that.
In my case, the answer by brentonstrine (and I see matdumsa also had the same idea) was the right one... I wanted to up-vote their answers, but being new here, I have no "reputation", so I have to write a full answer, in order to emphasize what I think is the real key here.
Several of these answers would successfully stop the WordPress index.php from being used ... but in many cases, the reason for doing this is that there is a real directory with real pages in it that you want to display directly, and the
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
lines already take care of that, so most of those solutions are a distraction in a case like mine.
The key was brentonstrine's insight that the error was a secondary effect, caused by the password-protection inside the directory I was trying to display directly. By putting in the
ErrorDocument 401 /err.txt
ErrorDocument 403 /err.txt
lines and creating error pages (I actually created err401.html and err403.html and made more informative error messages) I stopped the 404 response being generated when it couldn't find any page to display for 401 Authentication Required, and then the folder worked as expected... showing an apache login dialog, then the contents of the folder, or on failure, my error 401 page.
I’ve had the same issue using wordpress and found that the issue is linked with not having proper handler for 401 and 403 errors..
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
These conditions are already supposed not to rewrite the url of existing folders but they don’t do their job for password protected folders. In my case, adding the following two lines to my root .htaccess fixed the problem:
ErrorDocument 401 /misc/myerror.html
ErrorDocument 403 /misc/myerror.html
Of course you need to create the /misc/myerror.html,
This works ...
RewriteRule ^vip - [L,NC]
But ensure it is the first rule after
RewriteEngine on
i.e.
ErrorDocument 404 /page-not-found.html
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^vip - [L,NC]
AddType application/x-httpd-php .html .htm
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
etc
I'm not sure if I understand your objective, but the following might do what you're after?
RewriteRule ^/vip/(.*)$ /$1?%{QUERY_STRING} [L]
This will cause a URL such as http://www.example.com/vip/fred.html to be rewritten without the /vip.