Use Primary Domain on Subdirectory and Keep subdomain working

Primary Domain on most hosting services usually use “public_html” folder (or root folder) to store its files. When you create a subdomain, it will create a sub folder in “public_html”. I found it really messy when I have too many subdomains, which is confusing with the primary domain site files and folders.

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Therefore I was trying to find a way to redirect my primary domain URL to a subfolder, while other subdomain folders still work.

This job would require a “.htaccess” file to redirect requests to the correct folder. For example anything for “www.oscarliang.net” or “oscarliang.net” would be forwarded to a specific folder, requests with other subdomains will be ignored. (so they can be forwarded to the corresponding sub-directory by the hosting server.

It works like a charm, here is the .htaccess file.

.htaccess Code for redirecting main domain request to subfolder on public_html

Create a .htaccess file on your root directory (public_html), and copy and paste the following code in the file
make the changes to the file according to the instructions.

# blog.oscarliang.net # Redirect Primary Domain URL to Sub-Directory using .htaccess # Do not change this line. RewriteEngine on # Change domain.com to be your primary main domain. RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www.)?domain.com$ # Change 'subfolder' to be the folder you want to redirect request to. RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/subfolder/ # Don't change this line. RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d # Change 'subfolder' to be the folder you want to use for your primary domain. RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /subfolder/$1 # Change domain.com to be your primary domain again. # Change 'subfolder' to be the folder you will use for your primary domain # followed by / then the main file for your site, index.php, index.html, etc. RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www.)?domain.com$ RewriteRule ^(/)?$ subfolder/index.php [L]