Redirecting subdomains to directories in apache. | Comments (14)
Posted in Hosting, Linux/Unix on 20th August 2006, 2:26 am by Stuart
Note: It is likely you will need root access to carry out apache config alterations
12-02-07: Fixed mistake in the directory comparison line.
If you want to be able to redirect blah.domain.com to domain.com/blah/ so that blah.domain.com is shown in the address bar here’s a quick and dirty how to:
First off if you want any subdomain to be able to be redirected first you need to set-up your DNS correctly. In my case this was as simple as going to the people that host my domain and adding an A record with the wildcard * that pointed to my server’s ip address. Bear in mind your DNS settings may take a while to work so be patient. Before you proceed you should check that anything.domain.com resolves to the ip address of your server. You can check this by running:
ping iloveapache.domain.comThis should respond with something like this:
[root@cheekymonkey conf]# ping iloveapache.domain.com
PING iloveapache.domain.com (62.193.xxx.xxx) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from my.serverhostame.com (62.193.xxx.xxx): icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=0.058 ms
64 bytes from my.serverhostame.com (62.193.xxx.xxx): icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.040 ms
64 bytes from my.serverhostame.com (62.193.xxx.xxx): icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.071 ms
64 bytes from my.serverhostame.com (62.193.xxx.xxx): icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=0.028 msThe next step is to set-up the virtual host to respond to the wildcard subdomains. In the case of plesk you have to set-up a vhost.conf file but on any other apache installation you can just edit httpd.conf and look for the <VirtualHost> that corresponds to your site. If you are using Plesk you will need to ssh in to your server and create a vhost.conf file if it doesn’t already exist here where <domain.com> is your domain:
/var/www/vhosts/<domain.com>/conf/vhost.confOpen that file with the command line editor of your choice and add the following directives:
ServerAlias *.domain.com
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.* [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^([^\.]+)\.domain\.com
RewriteCond /var/www/vhosts/domain.com/httpdocs/%1 -d
RewriteRule ^(.*) /%1/$1 [L]Substitute domain.com for your domain. Now here’s a quick walkthrough how these rules work. The first line ServerAlias *.domain.com tells apache to accept anysubdomain.domain.com.
Next the rewrite rules work as follows:
- The first line of mod_rewrite
!^www.*only matches urls that don’t begin with www. You don’t want to redirect www.domain.com to www.domain.com/www/ do you? Note: you could add additional lines like these to prevent re-writing other subdomains like secure.domain.com if that should not be redirected to domain.com/secure/ - The second line
^([^\.]+)\.*$captures into a backreference anything that doesn’t have a period e.g. the subdomain. The plus makes sure that there is at least one character that matches. - The next condition checked is that the directory captured into the backreference does actually exist hence the -d.
- This last line
^(.*) /%1/$1 [L]takes the requested path and dumps it into a back reference and then rewrites it to point to the a directory (the subdomain backreference captured in the Rewrite conditions above) . In other words %1 is the subdomain backreference and $1 is the path backreference (that captured by .*). The important thing to rember is you can refer to backreferences in rewriteCond lines with % and backreferences in rewriteRules with $. Lastly the [L] (last) means doen’t further rewrite this URL. Note: You might want to leave this out if you are doing any subsequent rewrites, be sure to test what you have set-up thoroughly!!!
Now once you have made those changes if you are running plesk you will need to apply your vhost.conf changes with the following command:
/usr/local/psa/admin/sbin/websrvmng --reconfigure-vhost --vhost-name=<domain.com>And then whether are using Plesk or not you need to restart apache e.g:
service httpd restartNow you should find that if you set-up a directory called “meegan” with a valid index.html file in it. meegan.domain.com should find that file. The job’s a good’un.
I love that. You ask your mate a question and what does he do? He blogs it… and with your wife’s name as one of the examples!
Cheers buddy.
ah - just what I was looking for! thnx…
one thing - I am trying to rewrite to http://www.domain.com/red/subdomain — what would be change for that? just adding in “/red/” doesnt seem to work
@Warren: If you want to do that try this:
Perhaps you missed out the second line which checks that the directory exists?
Hi,
I have a site, http://www.hrindian.com. Instead of http://www.hrindian.com, i can even type blogs.hrindian.com. It all goes to the server main page, that is /welcome.php
Now I want to re-direct blogs.hrindian.com/anything to /blogs/blogsothers/blogs.php?id=anything
So if we type, http://blogs.hrindian.com/satya, then it should be redirect to http://www.hrindian.com/blogs/blogsothers/blogs.php?id=satya
Can you help me with this. The apache server is hosted on the linux system.
Satya
Nice stuff, I would like to add http://www. to my subdomains as well. So http://www.domain.com should still go to the root, but http://www.sub.domain.com should go to the sub dir.
How to do this?
Thank you for these instructions.
You can also do this using virutal hosts, but I did not know about this method.
To do it using virtual host method add new virtual host in http.conf file:
pico -w /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf
then add this block:
ServerName bugzilla.demha.com
ServerAlias bugzilla.demha.com
ServerPath /bugzilla
DocumentRoot /var/www/html/bugzilla
DirectoryIndex index.shtml index.html index.php index.htm
However this does not work for secure apache (https) - that is why your method is helpful. However I the pages now served from the sub-directory are no longer encyrpted. I am trying to figure out how to encrypt the sub-domain pages as well.
This is the way to do it on apache. But why not save less code and use .htaccess?
All you have to do is in file name “.htaccess” put in file:
DirectoryIndex about.htm
then your website address: http://www.website.com/about/
will go to: http://www.website.com/about/about.htm
without this file you will either get a 404 or view the parent directory.
Hope this helps those who dont dabble in apache
Thanks a bunch!
First of all great explanation. I’m trying to rewrite a cname.domain.com to domain.com/dir/cname.php
With the explanation above I can rewrite:
cname.domain.com –> domain.com/dir/cname/
But I need cname as being a php-file, so it should be:
cname.domain.com –> domain.com/dir/cname.php
Any ideas?
This is exactly what I have been looking for. My only question is that I don’t have a domain assigned to my server (yet) and I need to know if there is a way to make the rewrite the computer with the name it was called by instead of a domain name. So no matter what the server is called by (127.0.0.1,localhost,192.168..,Computer name, domain name) it returns that name.
Help..! I tried setting up the above method, but through Plesk dns zones instead of my registrar. Well plesk sucks in my personal feeling when it comes to managing DNS and subdomains.
MY main web site is fine but my subdomains are hit and miss. How do you setup your zone files through your registrar and point to plesk without conflicts? I can manage my registrar no problems but when I activate them there is nothing. Do you change or turn off plesk dns?
I have a mod rewrite problem that I cannot find a solution to. So, if anyone is interested in solving this for a high school teacher, here it is.
I have the following .htaccess file in my root directory for http://www.myedusite.com
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^([^.]+)\.k12\.myedusite\.com$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI) !^%1/ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /home/httpd/vhosts/myedusite.com/httpdocs/webumake/teachers/%1/$1
This rewrite creates http://username.k12.myedusite.com, so my website of http://chills.k12.myedusite.com will read exactly the same in the url address. I have a subdomain program installed in the web site builder that does this for any username account.
The question I have is how do I change the rewrite so that anyone who types in http://chills.k12.myedusite.com will be redirected to https://chills.k12.myedusite.com?
Sincerely,
Charles
How would one do this with say WAMP Server?
Does anybody know how to set it up on a server running CPanel? Tried with virtual hosts method and my apache process is 190Mb in size…
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