How to redirect request coming from a domain to a subdirectory invisibly?

Question

Hi,

I am trying to redirect all requests coming from example.com to a subdirectory. The code below accomplishes this but I cannot make the subdirectory invisible. (The subdirectory contains a Drupal instance with its own/htaccess file. Could that be the problem?)

  RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example.com$ [NC]

  RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://example.com/drupal/d6/$1 [L]

This ends up looking like this in the browser:

http://example.com/drupal/d6/install.php?profile=default

EDIT: I tried removing http://example.com from the RewriteRule, as recommended, but the redirect is still not invisible. :-(

Answer 1

You need to rewrite to the location, not to a full http:// URL. If you do it to a URL then a redirect is issued even without the [R] flag on the RewriteRule. Go instead to /drupal/d6/$1 and it should stay a rewrite (rather than "upgrading" to a redirect).

From http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod%5Frewrite.html

Prefix Substitution with http://thishost[:thisport]/ (which makes the new URL a URI) to force a external redirection.

Answer 2

An absolute URl will cause a redirect. Use just a path:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example.com$ [NC]
RewriteCond $0 !^drupal/d6/
RewriteRule .* drupal/d6/$0 [L]