[.htaccess] .htaccess rewrite to redirect root URL to subdirectory

Trying to get

www.example.com

to go directly to

www.example.com/store

I have tried multiple bits of code and none work.

What I've tried:

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example.com$
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(.+)\www.example\.com$
RewriteRule ^/(.*)$ /samle/%1/$1 [L]

What am I doing wrong?

This question is related to .htaccess mod-rewrite redirect

The answer is


I was surprised that nobody mentioned this:

RedirectMatch ^/$ /store/

Basically, it redirects the root and only the root URL. The answer originated from this link


You can use a rewrite rule that uses ^$ to represent the root and rewrite that to your /store directory, like this:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^$ /store [L]

you just add this code into your .htaccess file

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteBase /
    RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
    RewriteRule . /folder/index.php [L]
</IfModule>

Another alternative if you want to rewrite the URL and hide the original URL:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /store/$1 [L]

With this, if you for example type http://www.example.com/product.php?id=4, it will transparently open the file at http://www.example.com/store/product.php?id=4 but without showing to the user the full url.


One can use Redirect too for this purpose

Redirect 301 / www.example.com/store

Or Alias for mapping

Alias / /store

Edit: mod_alias is only applicable in httpd.conf.

Refrences


To set an invisible redirect from root to subfolder, You can use the following RewriteRule in /root/.htaccess :

RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/subfolder
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /subfolder/$1 [NC,L]

The rule above will internally redirect the browser from :

to

And

to

while the browser will stay on the root folder.


Most of the above solutions are correct but they are all missing the transparency of the redirection.

In my case, when visiting www.example.com I wanted to get redirected to the subdirectory /store but without updating the URL to www.example.com/store. (all I want is to get the page code form that directory). If that is your case the solution below works perfectly.

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} example\.com [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /store/$1 [L]

source: http://wiki.dreamhost.com/Transparently_redirect_your_root_directory_to_a_subdirectory


A little googling, gives me these results:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index.(.*)?$ http://domain.com/subfolder/ [r=301]

This will redirect any attempt to access a file named index.something to your subfolder, whether the file exists or not.

Or try this:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.sample.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ %{HTTP_HOST}/samlse/$1 [R=301,L]

I haven't done much redirect in the .htaccess file, so I'm not sure if this will work.


I don't understand your question...

If you want to redirect every request to a subfolder:

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ shop/$1 [L,QSA]

http://www.example.com/* -> wwwroot/store/*

If you want to redirect to a subfolder which has the domain name

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ([^\.]+\.[^\.]+)$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ %1/$1 [L,QSA]

http://www.example.com/* -> wwwroot/example.com/*

I'll answer the original question not by pointing out another possible syntax (there are many amongst the other answers) but by pointing out something I have once had to deal with, that took me a while to figure out:

What am I doing wrong?

There is a possibility that %{HTTP_HOST} is not being populated properly, or at all. Although, I've only seen that occur in only one machine on a shared host, with some custom patched apache 2.2, it's a possibility nonetheless.


Here is what I used to redirect to a subdirectory. This did it invisibly and still allows through requests that match an existing file or whatever.

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www.)?site.com$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/subdir/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /subdir/$1
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www.)?site.com$
RewriteRule ^(/)?$ subdir/index.php [L]

Change out site.com and subdir with your values.


Formerly I use the following code which is work correctly to redirect root URL of each of my domains/subdomains to their correspondence subdirectories which are named exactly as the sub/domain it self as below:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^sub1.domain1.com
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !subs/sub1.domain1.com/
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ subs/%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [L,QSA]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^sub2.domain1.com
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !subs/sub1.domain2.com/
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ subs/%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [L,QSA]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^sub1.domain2.com
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !subs/sub1.domain2.com/
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ subs/%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [L,QSA]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^sub2.domain2.com
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !subs/sub2.domain2.com/
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ subs/%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [L,QSA]

However when I want to add another subs or domains then it will need to be added in the above code. It should be much more convenient to simplify it to work like wildcard (*) as below:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^sub
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/subs/
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ subs/%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [L,QSA]

So whenever another subdomains/domains is added as long as the subdomain name has a prefix of sub (like: sub3.domain1.com, sub1.domain3.com etc.) the code will remain valid.


This seemed the simplest solution:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/$
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.example.com/store [R=301,L]

I was getting redirect loops with some of the other solutions.


I have found that in order to avoid circular redirection, it is important to limit the scope of redirection to root directory. I would have used:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/$
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.example.com/store [R=301,L]

Try this:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example\.com$
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^$ store [L]

If you want an external redirect (which cause the visiting browser to show the redirected URL), set the R flag there as well:

RewriteRule ^$ /store [L,R=301]

Two ways out of possible solutions to achieve this are: 1. Create a .htaccess file in root folder as under (just replace example.com and my_dir with your corresponding values):

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www.)?example.com$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/my_dir/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /my_dir/$1
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www.)?example.com$
RewriteRule ^(/)?$ my_dir/index.php [L] 
</IfModule>
  1. Use RedirectMatch to only redirect the root URL “/” to another folder or URL,

    RedirectMatch ^/$ http://www.example.com/my_dir


I think the main problems with the code you posted are:

  • the first line matches on a host beginning with strictly sample.com, so www.sample.com doesn't match.

  • the second line wants at least one character, followed by www.sample.com which also doesn't match (why did you escape the first w?)

  • none of the included rules redirect to the url you specified in your goal (plus, sample is misspelled as samle, but that's irrelevant).

For reference, here's the code you currently have:

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^sample.com$
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.sample.com/$1 [R=301,L]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(.+)\www.sample\.com$
RewriteRule ^/(.*)$ /samle/%1/$1 [L]

try to use below lines in htaccess

Note: you may need to check what is the name of the default.html

default.html is the file that load by default in the root folder.

RewriteEngine

Redirect /default.html http://example.com/store/


This will try the subdir if the file doesn't exist in the root. Needed this as I moved a basic .html website that expects to be ran at the root level and pushed it to a subdir. Only works if all files are flat (no .htaccess trickery in the subdir possible). Useful for linked things like css and js files.

# Internal Redirect to subdir if file is found there.
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/%{REQUEST_URI} !-s
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/subdir/%{REQUEST_URI} -s
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /subdir/$1 [L]

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