I've been reading multiple posts on here about htaccess folder rewriting but none seem to fit my question (properly).
My question is:
I have 2 sub folders on the server, website1 and website2.
When a user goes to www.foo.com I wish the visual url to remain the same but want the server URI to go to /website1/ where it will load the index.php for website1
I then want the same thing only when a user goes to www.bar.com again the url does not change but this time it links to /website2/ where it will load the index.php for the 2nd website.
Would really appreciate some help with this as I'm still learning about rewrites. Examples with explanations would be highly appreciated. Also any advice of best practice (if their is any) would also be appreciated.
KingCrunch is right -- the proper way to setup such environment is to use <VirtualHost> directive in Apache config file.
If, for whatever reason this needs to be dona via rewrite and .htaccess .. then you need mod_rewrite to be enabled and .htaccess files to be allowed to contain rewrite rule (AllowOverride directive).
Here are the rules:
Options +FollowSymLinks -MultiViews
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
# rule #1
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} =www.foo.com
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/website1/
RewriteRule (.*) /website1/$1 [L]
# rule #2
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} =www.bar.com
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/website2/
RewriteRule (.*) /website2/$1 [L]
This code is to be placed in .htaccess file in root folder. If placed elsewhere (e.g. configuration or virtual host context) some tweaking may be required.
Fist rule is for www.foo.com and second for another domain name. These rules are pretty much the same. We tell Apache to check domain name (via {HTTP_HOST} request variable), and if it matches our domain rewrite (internal redirect) URL into one folder deeper. The second condition is to prevent a rewrite loop (to not to rewrite already rewritten URL). It is necessary as Apache, after executing rewrite, goes to the next rewrite iteration (that is how it works), and this condition is required to stop the loop.
Useful link: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/rewrite/
I believe that you need to use only RewriteCond and RewriteRule directives. Take a look 'Virtual User Hosts' at http://httpd.apache.org/docs/1.3/misc/rewriteguide.html.
The logical is the same. (I think.)
Related
Ok, so I know this is a question that has been asked many times, however, I have not been able to find an answer to my particular case, so please do not shoot me down.
I have a website: http://gmcomputers.co.za.
I am redirecting this URL, using .htaccess file, to a subfolder to load the content:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/$
RewriteRule (.*) /gmcomputers/ [L,DPI,R=301]
Which works perefectly, except when I go to http://gmcomputers.co.za I get http://gmcomputers.co.za/gmcomputers/.
So my question is, how do I modify the above code to remove the /gmcomputers/ from being appended?
Please note I copied the code above from a website as I am not at all experienced in redirect, etc and am still learning. Also, the reason I am using .htaccess to redirect is due to there being other websites in the root directory and I therefore cannot edit any config files for Apache.
Thanking you.
You contradict yourself in your question. On the one hand you write that you want to redirect and that this "works perfectly", but then you write that you do not want that result.
My guess is that you actually do not want to redirect at all, but that instead you want to internally rewrite your requests to point to that server side folder. While the URL visible in the browser's URL bar does not show that folder. Is that what you are trying to ask?
If so take a look at this example:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/gmcomputers
RewriteRule ^ /gmcomputers%{REQUEST_URI} [END]
You might want to add an actual redirection to direct clients actually using the folder name in their requests:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^/?gmcomputers/(.*)$ /$1 [R=301,END]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/gmcomputers
RewriteRule ^ /gmcomputers%{REQUEST_URI} [END]
Best is to implement such rules in the central http server's host configuration. If you do not have access to that you can instead use a distributed configuration file (typically called ".htaccess") located in the DOCUMENT_ROOT folder configured for the http host, if you enabled the consideration of such files in your host configuration . Though that comes with a number of disadvantages. Above implementation works likewise for both approaches.
The Problem
I have a piece of code from another Q&A that is a generalized solution to forcing www in web addresses:
# Force www.
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^[^.]+\.[^.]+$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [L,R=301]
My understanding of the logic:
If the HTTP_HOST is defined solely as "(no period string).(no period string)", ie. example.com, then capture the remainder and rebuild the URL with www affixed to the head of the HTTP_POST and captured string.
I have placed this code in a .htaccess file in my web document root. Within that folder are a number of subdirectories which each contain their own .htaccess file to handle redirects and clean urls that are automatically managed by a CMS. All of the entries in these subdirectories tend to follow the following pattern:
RewriteRule ^$ /reason/displayers/generate_page.php?site_id=11111&page_id=222222
RewriteRule ^page$ /subdirectory/page/ [R=permanent]
RewriteRule ^page/$ /reason/displayers/generate_page.php?site_id=111111&page_id=333333
The first problem I have is that the RewriteRule in the solution only triggers for the root page of the website and not any subdirectory or pages:
http(s)://example.com ->http(s)://www.example.com (Good)
http(s)://example.com/subdirectory/ ->http(s)://example.com/subdirectory/ (Bad)
http(s)://example.com/subdirectory/page/ ->http(s)://example.com/subdirectory/page/ (Bad)
Looking at another Q&A, a user suggested adding RewriteOptions inherit to the subdirectory .htaccess. Doing that with my initial RewriteRule in a single test directory results in the following:
http(s)://example.com/subdirectory/page/ ->http(s)://example.com//reason/displayers/generate_page.php/events/?site_id=111111&page_id=333333
The page content does appear, but the URL is certainly less than desirable. The OP of that Q&A left a comment noting that they needed to use %{REQUEST_URI} rather than attempting to capture and reuse it. Using that for the RewriteRule, I get:
http(s)://example.com/subdirectory/page/ ->http(s)://www.example.com/subdirectory/page/?site_id=111111&page_id=333333
Close, but I certainly don't want the parameters to appear there for the sake of SEO.
Questions
Is there any way to apply this kind of rule to all subdirectories and pages without needing to go in and add the RewriteOptions inherit line to each subdirectory .htaccess? Given these are created dynamically by the CMS each time a site is created, manually managing the inclusion of that line isn't ideal.
Assuming that, is there any solution to resolve the "bad" URLs I receive from my attempt to utilize RewriteOptions inherit given what the CMS is placing into the subdirectories automatically?
Alternative
This last one is likely outside of this site's scope, but given it's related, I included it in case the preceding isn't doable or if the following is preferable:
Would it be possible to handle this kind of redirect using VirtualHosts entries? As far as I can tell in my case, both "example.com" and "www.example.com" resolve to the same IP and document root. If they could be separated, www.example.com could remain as is while example.com is set to go somewhere else, allowing for a clear redirect to occur, perhaps?
<VirtualHost 111.11.11.111:80>
ServerName example.com
ServerAlias www.example.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/html/
...
</VirtualHost>
Yes indeed, to apply your rule to all the sub-directories insert this rule in <VirtualHost..> section:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\. [NC]
RewriteRule ^ https://www.%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]
I've never been good at .htaccess, I'm trying to copy and paste some code that worked on another one of my domains and modify it to work here. I will have several rewritten URLs, some static, some dynamic, but I can't even get the simplest of them to work. This one is testable here: http://lindseymotors.com/home
Clearly, index.php is available because if you access http://lindseymotors.com it works.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^.* [NC]
RewriteRule ^home$ index.php
RewriteRule ^home/$ index.php
# When answering, if you could write a statement that would combine
# both of the statements above into one that would be appreciated.
As I said, these same conditions worked on another one my domains because I copied the code right over. I asked my server admin to double check everything on his end and it was fine. Any ideas?
Only thing I can think of is make sure the use of .htaccess is really on. The easiest way you can check since your server admin says it's fine is to put random text at the top of your .htaccess file. If your .htaccess file is being read and .htaccess files are enabled, it should throw a 500 internal server error. If not, then they don't have .htaccess files enabled and need to add AllowOverride All to the Apache config vhost.
Here is your rule combined into one as you noted. You really don't need the RewriteCond, but I will leave since you were using it previously.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^.* [NC]
RewriteRule ^home/?$ index.php [L]
Here's my situation. I have a web root and several subdirectories, let's say:
/var/www
/var/www/site1
/var/www/site2
Due to certain limitations, I need the ability to keep one single domain and have separate folders like this. This will work fine for me, but many JS and CSS references in both sites point to things like:
"/js/file.js"
"/css/file.css"
Because these files are referenced absolutely, they are looking for the 'js' and 'css' directories in /var/www, which of course does not exist. Is there a way to use RewriteRules to redirect requests for absolutely referenced files to point to the correct subdirectory? I have tried doing things like:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^/$ /site1
or
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^/js/(.*)$ /site1/js/$1
RewriteRule ^/css/(.*)$ /site1/css/$1
But neither of these work, even redirecting to only one directory, not to mention handling both site1 and site2. Is what I'm trying possible?
EDIT: SOLUTION
I ended up adapting Jon's advice to fit my situation. I have the ability to programatically make changes to my .htaccess file whenever a new subdirectory is added or removed. For each "site" that I want, I have the following section in my .htaccess:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/index.php$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_COOKIE} sitename=site1
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/site1/
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /site1/$1 [L]
Index.php is a file that lists all my sites, deletes the "sitename" cookie, and sets a cookie of "sitename=site#" when a particular one is selected. My RewriteConds check,
If the request is not for /
If the request is not for /index.php
If the request contains the cookie "sitename=site1"
If the request does not start with "/site1/"
If all of these conditions are met, then the request is rewritten to prepend "/site1/" before the request. I tried having a single set of Conds/Rules that would match (\w+) instead of "site1" in the third Condition, and then refer to %1 in the fourth Condition and in the Rule, but this did not work. I gave up and settled for this.
If the RewriteRules are in your .htaccess file, you need to remove the leading slashes in your match (apache strips them before sending it to mod_rewrite). Does this work?
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^js/(.*)$ /site1/js/$1
RewriteRule ^css/(.*)$ /site1/css/$1
EDIT: To address the comment:
Yes, that works, but when I do RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /site1/$1, it causes Apache to issue internal server errors. But to me, it seems like that should just be a generic equivalent of the individual rules!
What's happening with that rule is when /something/ gets rewritten to /site/something/, and apache internally redirects, it gets rewritten again, to /site/site/something/, then again, then again, etc.
You'd need to add a condition to that, something like:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/site/
RewirteRule ^(.*)$ /site/$1 [L]
You need to set up symlinks, which the rewrite rules will use so your absolute links at the server level can follow the symbolic links to the central site hosting account.
I think this is a pretty simple question.
How do you an apache rewrite to hide a folder.
EX: www.website.com/pages/login.php to www.website.com/login.php
or www.website.com/pages/home.php to www.website.com/home.php
The folder needs to alway be hidden. thanks
I assume what you want is for the browser to request /home.php but the server to actually use the file located at /pages/home.php, right? If so, this should work:
Make sure the apache mod_rewrite module is installed. Then, use something like this in your apache config, virtual host config, or (less desirable) .htaccess file:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^/(.*)$ /pages/$1
The rules use regular expressions, so you may want to look at a reference on that topic if you're unsure. Read the manual for more info on other directives (RewriteCond can be very useful) or rule options.
I know the original post here was from a couple years ago, but it's been coming up first in the search engine, so maybe this will help others looking to hide a folder name in the URL.
Not exactly what original poster wanted, but along the same lines.
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mydomainname\.com$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.mydomainname\.com$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/subfoldername/
RewriteRule (.*) /subfoldername/$1
The above example would redirect any request to mydomainname.com or www.mydomainname.com to the subfoldername directory in the root directory for the domain, and the subfolder name would not appear in the URL.
If your example actually reflects the files you need, then in your .htaccess file:
#Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^/pages/(.+)\.php $1\.php [NC, L]
Also, if the directory has read permission, it cannot be, in reality "hidden". I assume you mean that it no longer appears in the url.